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Financial talk for the rest of usSun, 02 Aug 2015 16:00:01 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0The High Price of Free Gameshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/high-price-of-free-games/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/high-price-of-free-games/#commentsTue, 26 May 2015 17:00:59 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=37836&preview_id=37836Last Christmas, I got my six-year old daughter a Kindle Fire for Christmas. It was to be her “big gift” of the year, and I thought it would be great for long car rides and fun, educational games. I expected her to love it, which she did, but there was one thing I didn’t expect – ...

‘Freemium’ games — addicting apps that start out free but entice you to make small, ongoing purchases — aren’t just targeted at kids. Photo: Lars Plougmann

Last Christmas, I got my six-year old daughter a Kindle Fire for Christmas. It was to be her “big gift” of the year, and I thought it would be great for long car rides and fun, educational games.

I expected her to love it, which she did, but there was one thing I didn’t expect – the constant onslaught of financial requests I would soon encounter. After loading my daughter’s Kindle with free games, the begging started right away.

“Mom,” my daughter would say, “I need $2 to open the next level of ‘Barbie Barber Shop.’”

“I have to unlock the curling iron to win,” she would explain in the world’s saddest voice.

And on “Frozen Free Fall,” a line matching game, she quickly found that the five lives you start out with was never enough.

“Mom, can I get some more lives?” she would ask. “A set of 12 lives is only 99 cents!”

How ‘Freemium’ Games Hook You

Fortunately, my daughter doesn’t really have any money of her own. Because if she did, I’m pretty sure she would be the proud owner of dozens of “levels” and “upgrades” on the handful of games she plays when she gets home from school. I was also able to set a password on her Kindle so that she couldn’t purchase the next level on “Kitty Pet Shop” by accident – or on purpose.

But it just goes to show how sneaky freemium games are when it comes to parting you and your hard-earned cash. And it’s not just games aimed at kids either – many freemium games are created solely for adults.

Remember the popular Facebook game “Candy Crush Saga”? According to several sources, Candy Crush was pulling in as much as $850,000 every 24 hours in its heyday.

As PsychGuides.com notes, freemium game developers use a series of strategies to hook us into games like Candy Crush that start out free, but ultimately cost money.

“The economy of it is simple enough – lowering an app’s price to zero can lead many more people to install it since it costs nothing to start playing,” they wrote in The Psychology of Freemium, an analysis of several studies on the subject.

The High Cost of Free, Addicting Games

Once you start playing, however, prepare yourself for constant temptation to spend nominal amounts of money on game features and upgrades that will improve your experience – or simply allow you to play longer.

And that’s where they nickel and dime you to death. For example, a 2014 study on mobile freemium games showed that 67% of in-app purchases were between $1 and $5, low enough that many people don’t think twice about it.

However, those small purchases only made up 27% of freemium game revenue in 2014, according to PsychGuides. Meanwhile, over 50% of freemium game revenue came from those who were heavily invested in their game of choice, whether it was Farmville, Clash of Clans, or even myVEGAS Rewards.

Termed “whales” — the same name casinos use for high rollers and heavy gamblers — these big spenders are extremely sought after by freemium game developers. Because as they have found, you don’t need to hook everyone into spending real money on extra lives and special bonus features; you just need to hook a handful of people who will spend some serious cash to stay busy and entertained.

To coerce potential big spenders into getting hooked onto a freemium game, game developers have come up with a unique bag of tricks. According to PsychGuides, most game developers’ strategies were created after studying data on freemium game users and learning to identify the exact moment when they begin to get bored.

By providing new levels or incentives at those key moments, freemium game developers can get their “whales” on the hamster wheel. As the game gets harder, they can then introduce additional aides or incentives that make it more exciting and easier to conquer — while still keeping some rewards juuust out of reach.

The problem? Most freemium games have no real “end.” So you can never win, no matter how much you spend.

The Key to Avoiding Freemium Games

Funny as this all may sound, video game addiction is real. If you feel as if you might be addicted to freemium games or any other video games, there are plenty of signs to watch out for.

As PsychGuides notes, some of the most common symptoms include restlessness and irritability when playing, lying to family and friends about gameplay, isolation from others, and preoccupation with thoughts of your game of choice when you are unable to play.

If any of these symptoms sound all too familiar, contact a local therapist or reach out to your local chapter of Online Gamers Anonymous, a self-help 12-step program founded in 2002.

On the other hand, if you’re spending on freemium games willfully, it might be time to take a look at your habits and the root cause of your problem. Chances are, you’re spending on freemium games because you’re bored or looking to fill a void. And, as with anything else, you may not realize just how quickly those $1, $5, and $10 purchases add up.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/high-price-of-free-games/feed/0102 Things to Do on a Money-Free Weekendhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/100-things-to-do-during-a-money-free-weekend/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/100-things-to-do-during-a-money-free-weekend/#commentsWed, 22 Apr 2015 17:00:06 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/07/17/100-things-to-do-during-a-money-free-weekend/Some time ago, I offered up the idea of the money-free weekend: For the last few months, my wife and I have been doing something every other weekend or so that we call a “money-free” weekend, in an effort to live more frugally. It’s actually quite fun – here’s how we do it. We’re not allowed to ...

For the last few months, my wife and I have been doing something every other weekend or so that we call a “money-free” weekend, in an effort to live more frugally. It’s actually quite fun – here’s how we do it.

We’re not allowed to spend any money on anything, no matter what. In other words, we can’t make a run to the store to buy food, we can’t spend money on any sort of entertainment, and so on. Since we often do our grocery shopping on Saturdays, on a “money-free” weekend, we delay it to Monday or Tuesday.

We can use our utilities, but no extra expenses on these utilities. No renting movies on cable, no text messages that aren’t already covered by our cell phone plan, and so on.

Since then, lots of people have sent me ideas for activities for money-free weekends, plus we’ve uncovered a bunch of our own. At the same time, many readers have asked for a master list of all of these ideas.

102 Things to Do for Free

So, here we go – a hundred fun ways to spend a money-free weekend. The list below includes the first 45 (with duplicates removed), plus about 60 new ones. If you’re inspired to try your own money-free weekend, hopefully this guide can act as a master list of things to do to make it more enjoyable. (Also, another productive way to spend that time is by working on your own business. Here are 50 small business ideas you could work on during a money-free weekend.)

Please note that everyone’s interests are different – you probably won’t find everything on this list fun and neither will someone else, but the two lists won’t overlap (I can think of countless things other people find fun that I find utterly dreadful). Anyway, here goes!

1. Check out the community calendar.

Look at your town’s website (as well as those of cities and towns nearby) or stop by city hall to find a list of events going on in the community, many of which are free. You’ll often be surprised at how many interesting (and free) activities are going on right now in your area.

2. Visit your local library.

Not only is a library a warehouse of books, most libraries also have extensive CD and DVD collections you can check out. Many libraries also have “story time” for young children, film nights, book clubs, concerts, author readings or lectures, and many other events that you may be unaware of – completely for free. Stop in and check out what they have to offer.

3. Get involved in community sports.

Many towns have community sports fields where both youth and adult sports leagues and activities are regularly going on throughout the weekend. Stop by, watch a game or two, and if something intrigues you, look into joining either as a participant or as a volunteer.

6. Bake a loaf of homemade bread.

You probably have everything you need to make a loaf of bread in your kitchen right now (except for maybe the yeast). Anyone can do it, and the fresh-baked bread comes out delicious. Here’s a detailed visual guide for making a simple loaf with minimal ingredients or complexity.

7. Teach yourself how to juggle.

All you really need is three balls and a video showing you how to do it. Not only is it a fun activity to learn, it’s something that’s fun to bust out as a party trick on occasion (trust me, you can always get people to smile if you juggle three fruits in the kitchen while preparing something).

Once you know how to juggle, you can always win a smile. Photo: Elvert Barnes

8. Learn how to change your car’s oil.

If your car’s due for an oil change, just bring home the oil and oil filter you need and teach yourself how to do it on your own. All you really need is an old pan to catch the used oil and a funnel to refill the oil tank and pour the old oil back into the canisters for later disposal. (Make sure you dispose of the old oil according to local laws; most gas and service stations will accept your used motor oil.)

Use your car manual as a guide for the procedure and you might just find it’s both a lot easier than you thought and a useful skill to have — plus it’s cheaper than taking your car to Jiffy-Lube (or wherever you go for oil changes).

9. Meet your neighbors.

Make an effort to introduce yourself to your neighbors if you don’t know them very well. If you meet any interesting people in your neighborhood, invite them over for a cup of coffee and a chat, just to get to know each other better.

Your neighbors could not only become your friends, they could also be a valuable resource – a friendly pair of eyes on your property when you’re away or a helpful set of hands when you’re trying to complete a challenging task.

10. Clear out your media collection – books, DVDs, CDs, etc.

Go through your collection, determine which items you’d actually like to keep, and get rid of the rest. You can either sell them at a used media shop or swap them online using services like PaperBackSwap and SwapADVD. In either case, you’ll get rid of stuff you don’t watch or read or listen to any more in exchange for either some money or new media to enjoy.

11. Have a ‘cupboard potluck.’

Go through your cupboards and find any items that might have slipped to the back over time. Invite some friends to do the same, then get together for a potluck dinner prepared from only these ingredients and whatever else you have on hand. Besides making for a “free” meal, it generates what I call creative success through constraint and a lot of fun for everyone involved.

12. Make a ‘101 Goals in 1,001 Days’ list – then start on some of them.

A 101 Goals in 1001 Days list is an effective way to codify all the things you’d like to do in one place, so that when you have spare time, you can just turn to the list and do what’s next on it.

On your money-free weekend, spend some time thinking about what belongs on this list: your biggest short- and near-term goals, both personally and professionally. When it’s finished, you’ll be ready to get started turning your goals into reality.

13. Make decisions about and write out your will.

This is a thought process that many people put off, but it makes you feel quite relieved when it’s done, adding to your peace of mind and relaxation. Spend some time thinking about what you want to happen to your personal assets when you die, particularly in terms of the personal mementos that you want others to have and where you want the value of your estate to go.

Do you want it all to stay with family members? Do you want to remember a charity? Then, when you’ve figured it out, sketch out the basics of a will. Later, you’ll likely have to hire a lawyer to prepare it for you or use a site like LegalZoom, but just having those decisions made doesn’t cost a thing and is a big mental relief.

14. Do a household maintenance walk-through.

Go through your home and look for any little maintenance tasks that need to be done. Do filters need to be replaced? Are there any burnt-out light bulbs?

Here’s a maintenance checklist that can give you some ideas as to what to look for. It might not be the most fun activity you can think of, but it’ll add subtly to your enjoyment of your home when it’s done: cleaner air, light bulbs in place, and peace of mind.

15. Start or join a fantasy sports league.

With baseball season just getting underway, you can go to Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports, or ESPN and easily start a free fantasy sports league for you and your friends. Even when you’re just playing for bragging rights, a fantasy league can spur competitive banter and endless discussion between your friends as the season unfolds.

16. Organize a self-guided walking tour.

Research the interesting historic and cultural sites in your town, then go on a walking tour of them. Pack a lunch in your backpack and have a picnic on the village green or in the park. You can easily turn this into a full day if you live in a compelling area.

17. Teach yourself how to knit.

Learning to knit requires two needles (a dollar, or probably free if your closet looks anything like ours), some yarn (extremely cheap and also likely laying in the closet if your home is like ours), a lot of patience, and an instructional video or two.

Try making a scarf for a friend or a small blanket for a new baby in the home of a friend or a family member. While it’s not quite free, you’ll learn a useful new skill — and if you stick with it, you’ll make things much more valuable than the input cost of a bit of yarn. Before long, you might even be able to sell your knitwear on Etsy.

18. Take some digital photographs.

Take your digital camera out with you and take pictures of anything you find interesting. Take lots of them, then go home later and see if you’ve taken anything beautiful and compelling. Great images can lay the groundwork for homemade greeting cards (yep, keep going downwards for more on this), nice desktop wallpaper, screensavers, personalized gifts, or other interesting uses.

20. Start a blog on a topic that interests you.

You can get a free blog using WordPress or Blogger. Join such a service and start a blog on a topic that interests you. Not only can it be a ton of fun, it also helps you improve your communication skills, reach out to others, and perhaps earn a bit of income down the road as well.

21. Organize a potluck block party.

Get permission from the city to do this before you try it – ask if you can block off a street for a block party on a certain date. Then throw yourself into organizing it. Go door to door, telling people about the block party, and inviting them to bring something. Ask if they have tables and/or chairs that can be used for it. Then, on the day of the party, set out the tables and chairs you borrowed and dig in. Since you’re the host, just contribute one of the “cupboard potluck” dishes you made from idea #11.

22. Visit a free museum or a zoo (or find out when you might be able to get in for free).

Many cities and colleges have free educational attractions, such as museums or zoos. Make an effort to enjoy these free attractions.

If your community doesn’t have free zoos or museums, call them and ask about opportunities for “free to the public” exhibits or “free days” — many museums open their doors for free or charge “pay what you can” admission one day a week. You can even ask whether they issue free passes upon request. Local libraries sometimes loan out museum passes for the day as well. You’ll often find there are many opportunities to enjoy museums, zoos, and science centers without any cost at all.

The Smithsonian Museum in Washington is free to the public. Photo: Don DeBold

24. Cook some meals in advance.

If you already have a bunch of basic food staples on hand, spend some time cooking some meals in advance to store in the freezer. It’s easy to prepare casseroles, soups, pasta meals, breakfast burritos, and many other items all at once, then store them in portion-sized containers in the freezer for quick and easy reheating on a busy weekday.

Not only is this way cheaper than eating out or buying convenience foods, it’s also healthier — and it can be more social, too. Missing some ingredients but have an abundance of others? Team up with friends and make it a social event – share ingredients so that you can all take some casseroles or other dishes home for the freezer.

26. Have a quilting bee.

All you need is a bunch of spare cloth (old shirts will even work, as will old curtains, old sheets, and so forth), some needles, thread, scissors, and some friends. Just get together, cut out squares of interesting cloth, and start sewing. You can stuff the inside with soft excess cloth, like t-shirts and such, instead of buying batting, and you’ll create a warm and interesting quilt over time.

27. Practice origami.

All you need is some scrap paper and a bit of time. Start with the simple things, like cranes and frogs, then you can try harder stuff like an origami iris. A well-made origami piece constructed from interesting paper can be a beautiful decoration.

28. Make a how-to video for YouTube.

Share your knowledge! All you need is a digital camera that captures video or a smartphone and (optionally) some video editing software. Just create a video to demonstrate how to accomplish something interesting and useful.

Start off by writing a script for yourself, then turn on the camera and follow your script. When you’ve got a take you’re happy with, upload it to YouTube and let others enjoy it. If it’s useful and entertaining, the viewers will come.

This might be a boring task now, but if you can invest some time and trim $50 from your monthly bills for free, your future self will be very happy.

30. Play football/soccer.

All you need is a ball, some open space, and some friends. Designate whatever is available as goals, then kick the ball around.

Don’t worry about being terrible at the game – as long as everyone’s just having fun, it really doesn’t matter how bad you are. Trust me – I’ve played football with Europeans who spent their entire lives playing while I’d played perhaps an hour of serious football in my life, yet I had a lot of fun (albeit with a lot of falling down and jumping out of the way).

31. Make a time capsule.

Find a small box, and then walk around your house gathering items that represent the reality of your present-day life: A newspaper or magazine, photographs, recent receipts, last week’s grocery store list, letters or greeting cards, and so on. You could even include a digital flash drive with photos or a video you and your family make for your “future selves” to watch.

Put it all in the box, tape it up securely, and write a date on the outside saying when you’re allowed to open it — say, 10 or 15 years from now. You’ll probably have fun compiling a slice of your daily life, and you’ll enjoy reflecting on those items in the future even more, when your lives and the world have changed.

32. Open up a ‘time capsule.’

You may not have set out to make an official time capsule 10 or more years ago, but chances are you have some old photos, high school notebooks, or other mementos stuffed in a box somewhere, whether in a closet, under the bed, or in the attic. Pull them out and grant yourself the time to revel in those old memories or share them with your kids.

33. Scan your old pictures.

If you have a digital scanner at home, put it to use and scan that pile of old prints you just dug out. Don’t have a scanner? Taking a photo of a photo with your smartphone is a viable substitute (make sure there’s ample natural light). Digitizing these memories is a good way to safeguard them, since photos left in an attic or basement can deteriorate or get stuck together after a while.

If you have a rotating screensaver of pictures, scanning in old prints and adding them to the rotation will make your screensaver all the more amazing. Plus, it becomes easy to just attach them to emails and send them to friends and family — or post them on social media on “Throwback Thursdays.”

34. Have a film festival.

Invite some friends over and ask them each to bring one of their favorite DVDs. Then just settle in with some snacks (whatever you have on hand) and burn a lazy afternoon and evening just watching movies together. It’s a ton of fun and it doesn’t cost anything at all.

35. Seduce your partner.

Really, is there any way to have more fun than that for free? It’s fun, romantic, great exercise, and it can help heal any relationship problems you might be having. An afternoon in your partner’s arms will make both of you feel better, and it won’t cost a penny.

36. Do some networking.

Spend an afternoon drafting emails to professional contacts, just to see what they’re up to and to let them know what you’re up to. Set them up to send en masse on Monday morning. While it might sound boring, it can open up countless doors for your career if you do it consistently, and help you build new relationships and friendships — and all it takes is a little bit of spare time.

37. Practice yoga – or try it for the first time.

All you need is some floor space and a blanket to do most yoga poses. Try out a basic yoga session to see if you like it. It increases flexibility, improves concentration, and holding some of those positions for long periods can be a powerful workout.

38. Try Geocaching.

Part outdoor adventure, part treasure hunt, Geocaching — hiking in search of hidden “caches” you can track by their GPS coordinates — is one of our family’s favorite frugal activities. If you have a GPS device or a smartphone, you don’t need to buy anything else to get started.

Just visit Geocaching.com and type in your home address (or the address where you plan to be walking or hiking), and you’ll likely find a few geocaches stashed in the area. Pick one, add the coordinates to your GPS (or just use the app on your smartphone), and head out the door, letting your device serve as a treasure map.

39. Do a neighborhood cleanup.

No need to organize a formal activity. Just walk through the shared spaces in your neighborhood (parks, sidewalks, etc.) with a trash bag and a pair of gloves, and pick up the litter.

Not only is it a pleasant way to get your blood going, it also beautifies your neighborhood and the surrounding area, not just for your own enjoyment, but for everyone. If you want to really get into it, invite people that live near you to get involved as well and make an event out of it.

40. Build some paper airplanes.

Design and build a bunch of different paper airplanes, then have a competition in the back yard to see which one flies the best. This is a great way to use up some scrap paper, particularly old newspapers. You can easily turn it into a contest – the winner gets to pick what activity to engage in next, or gets to choose what you’re having for supper.

41. Rearrange the furniture in a room.

It’s amazing how much you can refresh a room just by moving the furniture into new positions. Try moving the couch to a different wall, then moving the entertainment center elsewhere. Take your bed and turn it 90 degrees, then move the dressers to match the new configuration. It can completely refresh the look of the room and give you a good workout to boot.

42. Read an entertaining book.

Look around your house for a fun book to read, perhaps something loaned to you by a friend or something you received as a gift, and curl up and let yourself be sucked into the story. I’m a sucker for Stephen King novels – I can just pick up any one and quickly be sucked straight into the plot for a fun afternoon’s read.

43. Build a giant blanket fort.

If you have kids, there are few things more fun than an afternoon spent building and playing in a gigantic fort in the living room. Use chairs, blankets, and tables to make an enormous hidden structure, then hide in there and play games and read books.

If they’re a bit older, build two forts (on opposite sides of the room) and have “fort wars” – toss small beanbags and pillows back and forth. No cost, but an afternoon that’s a ton of fun.

44. Call a family member or a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while.

Not only is this a chance to catch up with another person who’s important to you and firm up your relationship, it can also be a very entertaining and enjoyable way to spend an hour or two.

45. Start a natural collection or an observation notebook.

In other words, spend some time in nature collecting items of interest (like particular rocks) or making observations of things. Perhaps you’ll want to look for birds, or maybe your passion is rocks or feathers. Whatever it is, get your hiking boots on, get out there, and see what you can find. Here’s some advice on how to get started.

46. Start a compost bin.

All you need is a barrel or a large bucket (or, if you live in the country, some open space). Put your vegetable waste, coffee grounds, and eggshells in that bucket; you can add some yard waste such as grass clippings and leaves, too. (Don’t put meat, fish, or dairy products in your compost pile.) On occasion, scoop in a bit of dirt from the ground.

Move the contents around regularly and keep it a bit moist. Over time, the compost will turn almost black. At that point, you can let it dry out and you’ll have powerful, perfectly natural fertilizer for your lawn or garden.

47. Have a yard sale.

Hosting a yard sale or garage sale is a great way to spend a money-free weekend — and a potentially lucrative one at that. Not only does it give you an excuse to clean out unwanted clutter from your home, it’s something the whole family can participate in, offering an entire weekend’s worth of entertainment and activity (and a nice little wad of money at the end to boot). Yard sales are a great way to turn excess clutter into extra cash, and that’s a win for everyone involved.

48. Learn a foreign language.

Doubt this can be free? There are a lot of ways to learn a foreign language online, from podcasts that teach language skills, to apps like DuoLingo, to YouTube videos and many other free language learning opportunities. You can often find popular self-taught foreign language courses like Rosetta Stone at your local library, too. Search around for resources for any language that you might want to learn – you’ll find tons of materials to help you.

49. Deep-clean the room in your house you spend the most time in.

One great afternoon project that will provide aesthetic value for years is deep cleaning a single room in your house, ideally the room you’re in most often. Getting that room pristine will subtly add to your enjoyment of that room for quite a while. This means going the whole nine yards – moving everything out, scrubbing the walls, thoroughly cleaning the floor, cleaning all of the items in it, and so forth. When you’re done, the room will feel fresh and new in a very subtle way.

50. Make some homemade greeting cards.

Whether you want to make homemade birthday cards, thank-you cards, or Christmas cards, all you really need is some card stock or some cheap blank cards from your local dollar store, plus some photographs (or a desktop printer). You might also want to have some other creative printed materials on hand – I like to keep old New Yorker covers for purposes like these.

51. Take a nap.

Seriously. Most people do not get adequate sleep during the week. Why not just kick back and take a snooze for an hour or two? It’s the ultimate free energy refresher.

52. Get things done.

Almost everyone has a long list of things to do “when they have time.” Use the fact that you’re intentionally spending a money-free weekend to in fact get some of those things done.

Clean up the house. Dust the front room. Sweep the basement floor. Fix that old toaster. Go through the stuff that’s accumulated in the garage. At the end of the weekend, you’ll have accomplished something useful that you can feel good about, plus your wallet will be fully intact.

53. Dig up your family tree.

Take a peek at Genealogy.com or Ancestry.com and see what you can find out about your ancestors. If your family has been in the area for a long time, your local library can help you track down centuries-old birth certificates and other records. And don’t forget to ask your oldest living family members what they remember about their own parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

Try to assemble a family tree, and see if you can link to any distant cousins or long-lost family members. Doing this can give you a much clearer picture of your heritage and help you get in touch with your family roots.

54. Sit down with your partner for an afternoon and talk about your goals.

Spending some time with your partner discussing goals can go a long way towards getting you both on the same page in your relationship. Find out what your partner wants out of life and what you can do to support it, then share your own desires. Find areas where you’re working in concert toward something bigger. Doing this can only lead to more clarity in your relationship. Here are some tips for getting started.

55. Play ‘Calvinball.’

To play the wonderfully disorderly sport often portrayed in “Calvin and Hobbes,” all you need is a ball (or a few balls), some number of children, some open space, and a good imagination. Just kick the ball around (or throw it) and make up rules as you go along. With three or more kids, a game of Calvinball can go on for a good hour with everyone having a great time.

56. Do some puzzles.

I enjoy doing both sudoku puzzles and crossword puzzles. You can find a huge number of these puzzles online for free, and they’re a great way to stretch your mind a bit at the kitchen table.

57. Volunteer your time.

There are countless volunteer projects out there that need nothing more than your time. A Saturday working for a volunteer cause is a Saturday well spent: You can meet other people in your community while making a positive contribution to society and working your body and your mind for the benefit of others. You may even pick up a new skill, and either way, it will leave you at the end of the day knowing you used your gifts to help out others.

59. Turn on the water sprinkler.

This is another great way to have family fun with kids. Just run out a hose in the backyard, attach a sprinkler to the end, and turn it on, shooting the water up into the air. Darting back and forth through the cold water on a hot day is a ton of fun for kids — and for parents, too.

60. Try a basic meditation technique.

Meditation is a spectacular way to push stress out of your life and calm yourself. Knowing how to meditate effectively and doing it regularly can be a major part of your stress management, and it costs nothing. Here’s a wonderful basic meditation technique to get you started – there are countless others out there. Try a few and see which ones work well for you.

61. Get involved in an open source programming project.

If you’re a computer programmer, there are few more intellectually stimulating ways to get involved in your passion than to be involved in an open source programming project. One role that almost every project can use is a person who’s willing to fix mundane, boring bugs – finding that one line of code that’s causing a minor issue and fixing it. Look for a project that’s compelling to you and dig in.

62. Teach yourself a card trick.

Card tricks are a fun way to entertain people in almost any situation. Many tricks rely on knowing a specific pattern, some basic sleight of hand, or a combination of the two. Learning a clever card trick and mastering how it’s done can be a great way to spend an afternoon, especially since you can use the skill again and again as a party trick. Here’s a great one to learn – it’s really clever and can utterly baffle people.

63. Attend a religious service.

Even if you’re not a believer, attending a religious service can be a worthwhile educational experience. I really enjoy attending services of different faiths, as the varieties of religious experience are quite fascinating and incredibly insightful. Plus, most religious services – if you pay careful attention – offer a ton of intellectual food for thought no matter what your beliefs are. A religious service is always a worthwhile experience.

64. Start a workout routine.

Most basic exercises – push-ups, sit-ups, jogging, and so forth – require no extra equipment at all. Spend some time doing research into fitness and figuring out a basic workout routine that will work for you, then do the basic “stress tests” you’ll need to do to figure out where you’re at.

For example, the one hundred push-ups routine is very useful, but you need to couple it with other exercises, such as leg lifts, prone lifts, and jogging. You can also try this 10-minute cardio workout that gets progressively more intense, incorporating jumping jacks, push-ups, burpies, and other free exercises.

65. Read a ‘Great’ book.

By this, I mean a book that genuinely challenges both your beliefs and ideas as well as your language skills. Reading a great book is always a good mental workout.

66. Go swimming.

Almost every town has a community swimming pool, public pond, or some sort of area where residents can swim – lacking that, go to a state park with a public swimming area. Swimming is wonderfully invigorating and often makes me feel very peaceful – best of all, it’s something you can often do for free.

67. Get involved with public access television.

If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the process of producing a television show, most communities offer the resources for you to do just that. Stop by your local public access station and see what opportunities are available there. You can usually get involved for free in an ongoing program as an extra hand and learn a great deal about the whole process.

68. Blow bubbles.

Just mix one part liquid dish soap with 15 parts water to make a homemade bubble solution. One quick way to do this is to just mix 1/4 cup dish soap with 3-3/4 cups of water. Use filtered and fairly soft water if you can.

Then, take a wire coat hanger, bend and twist it into a small loop or two, and you’re ready to go. Another idea: Take a tin can or coffee can, remove the top and bottom and hammer down any sharp metal edges, then dip the end in the solution and wave it in the air. Blowing bubbles is even more fun if you have small children who love to chase them or are just learning to blow them.

69. Start a journal.

Let’s face it, we start to forget some things — especially the little details — as we get older. A journal can be a powerful way to recall the events that happened in your life that made you who you are. Getting in the habit of writing down the events of your day each night is a great way to remember the specifics. Entries on what you’re thinking about now can be the basis of powerful memories and reflections in the future. Plus, it can offer a release from the tensions of the day.

All of that for just a pen and an old notebook? It’s a great free way to spend some time.

70. Write a letter to your future children or grandchildren.

All of us have some advice or some stories inside of us that we want to someday share with our children, grandchildren, or other loved ones. Take some time to write these things down with the intent of giving them to that person some day. In the event that you pass on, you can be sure that they’ll still receive the story or advice you wanted to tell them. This can be a very powerful way to consider your feelings and memories as you format them in a way that they can be shared with the ones you care about the most.

71. Make Christmas gifts in advance.

If you know already that some people will be on your Christmas list, why not spend some time now making them interesting and thoughtful gifts and saving yourself some money over the long haul? Make them some homemade soap, some homemade hot chocolate mix, and maybe a bottle of homemade beer as a gift. Prepare all of these items, then go ahead and box and wrap them, since they’ll stay good for months.

Not only is the gift less expensive than what you’d spend at your local department store, it’s also more thoughtful, and it’ll save you time during the harried Christmas season.

72. Go ‘coupon scavenging.’

If you get the Sunday paper, scavenge the coupons out of it, see if there are any for products you normally buy, and chuck the rest. If you find several coupons, then it might be worthwhile to scavenge. Stop by any friends or neighbors who also get the paper and ask if you can have their flyers when they’re done with them, then clean out the useful coupons in those, too.

For example, if you buy V8 Fusion as the default fruit juice for your kids (it’s far healthier than almost anything else like it that you could give them) and you spy a $1-off coupon for a bottle, every coupon you scavenge is like finding a dollar bill, and it costs you nothing.

73. Pick up a musical instrument and learn it.

Yes, you can find an instrument for free — and learn how to play it for free as well. Just hit Craigslist and Freecycle looking for freebies, then utilize YouTube and other resources for tutorials. Here’s a detailed guide to learning an instrument for free. With a bit of diligence and effort, you can start from nowhere and learn to play a song on your own instrument for no cost.

74. Plan next year’s summer vacation.

Think about some options for your next trip and what you want to do in general, then start researching the specifics online. Do some detailed comparison shopping for airfare, lodging, or vacation packages, and even set up alerts for cheap deals and tickets. Gather up all of this research, then have a family meeting about the trip to make any final decisions.

Not only will all this advanced planning save you a ton of money, it can actually be a lot of fun researching a potential trip and it gives you more time to get excited about it. In fact, studies show the anticipation of a fun experience typically brings more enjoyment than the event itself.

75. Pick up (and read) a copy of the town’s free newspaper.

Many cities have a free newspaper that you can snag at the grocery store – some cities have quite a few of them. I love them – they’re free reading that keeps me informed about the local area and also lets me know about free upcoming events.

Around here, we have several free newspaper options – Toons and Cityview are both well worth reading. Try looking in the front lobby of your local library for your free newspaper, or in the front of your local grocery store.

76. Play with a pet – it doesn’t have to be your own.

An hour spent playing fetch or Frisbee with a dog or rubbing its belly is an hour well spent, and the same can be said for time spent curled up petting a cat. Spend some quality time with your pet or with the pet of a neighbor or a friend; animal shelters are sometimes in need of volunteers to walk or play with their rescue pets as well. Every pet loves attention and a bit of exercise and interaction, and petting an animal can lower your blood pressure and reduce stress hormones.

Most pets long for human attention, and they’ll return the favor by lowering your blood pressure. Photo: Mitchell Jones

77. Go on a wandering walk.

Step out your front door and go in whichever direction looks the most interesting. As long as you have some basic navigational skills, you won’t get lost, and you can turn around or backtrack whenever you get bored or hit a dead end.

All too often, we tune out our immediate surroundings during our rushed commute to work or school. Who knows what kind of interesting stuff you might notice in your neighborhood if you take your time meandering?

78. Hold a baby.

To me, there are few things more enjoyable than holding a very young baby. They smell wonderful, are usually warm and soft, and often drift off to sleep right in your arms. I don’t even mind the crying ones, as some whispering in their ear can usually calm them down.

There’s nothing better than sitting all relaxed in a chair with a soft, sweet-smelling newborn in your arms. If there’s a new parent in your circle of friends or family, why not offer to relieve them with a couple of hours of free babysitting?

79. Exchange massages with your partner.

A great massage is incredibly relaxing and enjoyable, but they can also be really expensive. Instead of shelling out the cash, just stay at home and exchange massages for free with your partner. Agree to spend 15 minutes or a half an hour massaging each other deeply and you’ll find that you’re both quite relaxed and happy afterward – and perhaps ready to try other free and fun activities.

80. Help out an elderly or disabled friend or neighbor.

There’s always a person or two in your life that could use a helping hand, but often are too proud to ask. One great way to bridge this gap is to just stop in and visit and pay attention – if they need something, you’ll usually find out. Then just volunteer to do it and get started on the task.

Quite often, you’ll find that it’s the simple things that really help – reaching something on a high shelf or managing a simple household task. And that little effort can make all the difference. Few things can make you feel more fulfilled than helping someone you care about in their moment of need.

81. Start a book club – or find one to join.

If you like reading and know other friends that enjoy it, too, consider starting a book club with them where you all read the same book for a week then meet to talk about it. It can transform reading from a solitary activity into a more socially oriented one, and with a library at your disposal, it can be a free activity as well.

82. Play a card game.

A deck of cards and a few friends are all you need for a fun afternoon. Games like bridge, canasta, pinochle, pitch, euchre, hearts, spades, and 500 are not only intellectually challenging, but are intensely social activities as well, drawing you out to interact with others around you.

83. Have an ‘entertainment swap’ with a friend.

This one’s pretty easy. Just have a friend bring over a pile of their own DVDs, CDs, books, and video games that they think you’d like. When they arrive, exchange an item for an item as a temporary swap. This will not only refresh your media collection for a while, but can provide a great opportunity for you to talk about your interests with a friend.

84. Take a child to a playground – and actually play with the child.

Take your child, or a child of a family member or a friend, to the local park. But instead of just watching the child play, dive in and participate, too.

Go down the slide. Swing in the swings. Climb across the monkey bars. Not only will the child adore you for it, you’ll find playing like that is simply exhilarating – a little taste of childhood all over again.

85. Explore a blog you like.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably at least a casual reader of at least one blog. What you might have forgotten, though, is that most worthwhile blogs have tons of useful and entertaining stuff in their archives.

Dig deep in the archives of one of your favorite blogs. You can start with The Simple Dollar by visiting my author page – a listing of all of the articles I’ve ever posted – and clicking through to the ones you find interesting or browsing some of the categories those posts fall into. Many popular blogs also have “best-of” indexes or similar features.

86. Explore Wikipedia.

You can also allow yourself some time to get lost down a Wikipedia rabbit hole — when you look up a tidbit of history, then start clicking deeper and deeper to learn more about related events and interesting historical subplots. Since each entry cross-links to so much other information, you could go on forever. Wikipedia, despite its imperfections, is like candy to the curious mind.

87. Work for a political campaign.

Really interested in politics? There are a lot of ways you can work for a campaign from your own home whenever you have the spare time (like during a money-free weekend).

One great way is to get involved with a phone bank. Basically, you call up people to provide information about your candidate of choice. You can do this using the free weekend minutes on your cell phone or by using software provided by the campaign. Other volunteers are often needed to go door to door handing out flyers or collecting signatures. Just contact the campaign you support, and ask how you can help out.

88. Clean out a closet.

We’ve all got spaces in our living areas that accumulate junk, and it’s often a small psychological burden – we dread going in there and digging for something we need. Well, why not get rid of one of those burdens? Clean out a closet in your home.

Find out what’s actually buried in there and get rid of the unimportant items. You might even find some interesting things you’d forgotten about, and you’ll feel a lot better about your organization when you’re done.

89. Play Frisbee at the park.

Get a friend (or a pet) and dig out that old Frisbee from your closet, then head out to an open field and toss it around. It’s a lot of fun, a great excuse to run around and stretch and jump, and it doesn’t cost a dime.

90. Take a long, soaking bath.

You’ll notice many of these suggestions don’t cost money — they simply cost time that you may not otherwise grant yourself. When was the last time you treated yourself to a long, relaxing bath? Fill up a tub with warm water, strip down, get in, and relax. I like to do this with a bottle of wine, and I’ve even read a book while in the tub. Just stretch out and soak for a while and your stress will melt away.

91. Binge-watch a great TV series.

A cold or rainy weekend is perfect for plowing through episode after episode of an addictive or amusing show. If you already have a Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription, you have unlimited access to thousands of movies and commercial-free TV shows — including some critically acclaimed TV series perfect for “binge-watching” if you’ve never seen them before. Many libraries also loan out complete seasons of TV series on DVD.

Popular series available for streaming on Netflix include “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” “Arrested Development,” “30 Rock,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “House of Cards,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Sherlock,” “Lost,” and even old favorites like “Cheers” and “The Wonder Years.” (While we’re on the subject, here are 75 things worth watching on Netflix.)

With Amazon Prime you have access to “The Wire,” “The Sopranos,” “Downton Abbey,” “24,” “The Americans,” “Broad City,” “Veronica Mars,” and many others. And many series, like “Louie,” “How I Met Your Mother,” Ken Burns’s “The Civil War,” “The X-Files,” and “Parks and Recreation,” are available on both sites.

92. Attend a dress rehearsal.

Many performance groups hold dress rehearsals before opening night that are free and open to the public if you call in advance, particularly if you have young children. Give the theater a ring and ask if there are open dress rehearsals for a particular show, and then enjoy the show for free! It’s a great way to give your kids a taste of theater at no cost.

93. Attend a free community class.

Many institutions and stores offer free classes on the weekends on all sorts of topics. Stop by a local food store and catch a free cooking class, or a hardware store to learn about a home repair topic.

Got kids? Try something like the Home Depot Kids Workshop, where they offer free how-to clinics, crafts, and projects for kids ages five to 12. I’ve seen these going on while stopping by Home Depot on a Saturday morning, and they look like a lot of fun!

94. Donate some unwanted things to charity.

If you’ve sorted through your stuff to clear out the clutter, but don’t want to have a yard sale, consider giving the stuff you don’t want to charity. Not only will you have a cleaner house, you’ll have the good feeling of knowing your items are going to be used by someone who actually needs them. Get receipts for your donations, and you’ll have some extra tax deductions next April, too.

95. Discover new music that you like.

Try out free music services like Pandora or Spotify. Pandora allows you to enter a musical “seed” — your favorite band, song, or album, for instance — and generates a radio station based on that information, playing songs with similar “musical DNA.” Give it a whirl – you’ll be surprised at the amount of good music you’ve yet to discover that you’re able to listen to for free.

96. Revisit a favorite book or favorite movie.

Most of us have some works of writing or film that simply resonate with us on a very deep level. If a certain book brought you to tears, restored your faith, or shook your core years ago, it might be worth reading again.

It can be a reinvigorating exercise, and you’ll be amazed at the little details you’d forgotten or even missed the first time. I like to re-read “Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and continually draw new inspiration from it.

97. Build a cardboard castle.

This is a great one if you have kids. Stop by an appliance store and ask if they have any extra appliance boxes you can take home, then flatten them and load up your vehicle.

When you get home, use them to build a giant cardboard castle in your living room or in your backyard. Cut out doors and windows, and attach multiple boxes together to make rooms. This can be a great afternoon of fun for free!

98. Dig an old video game console out of the closet and play some of your favorites.

A lot of families have old video game consoles in the closet – an ancient PlayStation or Super Nintendo, long forgotten about, with a controller and a few games. Dig out that old console and hook it up to a television, then relive some of the memories of the games you used to play for hours. I did this not too long ago and found myself replaying a good chunk of Final Fantasy IX.

99. Do some amateur stargazing.

Go outside on a clear evening, preferably away from city lights, and look up at the sky. Use some handy star maps or an app such as SkyView Free to know what you’re looking at. Spread out some blankets on the ground, lay flat on your back, stare upwards, and realize how magnificent the universe is around you.

100. Go on a hike or a long walk.

Look up some local hiking or walking trails, and just take off. Let yourself get absorbed into nature and simply enjoy the journey. Go at your own speed – this is for your own personal enjoyment, after all.

101. Take a stab at writing poetry (or other forms of creative writing).

The basics of poetry are easier than you might think – just try writing down what’s on your mind. Whatever you’re thinking about, just write it down. That can provide the basics of any poem.

Then, just read through the stuff you’ve written down, choose the words that seem beautiful to you, and assemble them until the whole work means something. This can be a deeply enlightening and personal experience, actually, and one that really stirs the creative juices.

102. Go on a bike ride.

If you’ve got a bicycle and a helmet in your garage or closet, you already have everything you need for some good exercise and some good fun. Head outside and bike away. Almost every town and every state park around here has an extensive array of bike trails, so you can almost always find somewhere new and interesting to ride. Plus it’ll help get you into shape really quickly.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/100-things-to-do-during-a-money-free-weekend/feed/15310 Strategies for Beating a Spending Addictionhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/ten-strategies-for-beating-a-spending-addiction/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/ten-strategies-for-beating-a-spending-addiction/#commentsTue, 10 Mar 2015 14:00:56 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=36322Most of us enjoy occasional splurges where we buy new things for ourselves – that’s normal. However, for some people, that rush grows into an addiction where they find themselves buying things they scarcely want just to chase that rush. A few sure signs of a spending addiction include buying things that you know you ...

Most of us enjoy occasional splurges where we buy new things for ourselves – that’s normal. However, for some people, that rush grows into an addiction where they find themselves buying things they scarcely want just to chase that rush.

A few sure signs of a spending addiction include buying things that you know you don’t really want, having a sense that a day isn’t complete without spending money, having lots of unopened and unused items at home because you don’t have the time to enjoy them, and rarely having adequate money in your checking account (usually paired with high credit card balances).

Once upon a time, I had a spending addiction myself. Over the years, I’ve broken that addiction. Here are 10 key steps that worked for me – and can work for you, too.

Be Honest With Yourself About Your Problem

If those “sure signs” listed above sound pretty familiar to you, it’s very likely that you have a spending addiction of some sort. That spending addiction is a real problem, as it’s keeping you from being financially successful.

The first – and probably the most important – thing you can do is admit to yourself that you have a real problem when it comes to spending. Many people choose to deny that they have an addictive problem for a number of reasons. Some actually want to continue in their addiction; others may want to maintain a self-image of some kind; some do it because spending money covers up a hole in their life; others might simply not see the signs at all, whether by choice or otherwise.

Whatever the reason, be honest with yourself. Admit that you have a problem. Doing this truthfully with yourself is often like flipping a switch, one that changes how you see your life and the choices you make.

Figure Out Whether You Genuinely Want to Change

Simply admitting that you have a problem, however, isn’t enough. For some people, their attachment to spending is more important to them than the benefits of breaking it.

Do you genuinely want to change? Is the thrill of buying something really worth the negative feelings you get from looking at your bank account and the unused stuff around your house?

Without a genuine desire for change, changing your financial habits is utterly impossible. You have to want that change.

Lasting change in a person’s life comes from two key ingredients: motivation, which is what gets you started, and discipline, which is what keeps you sticking with it. Without that core motivation to get started, you can’t change. Without that internal desire to change yourself, you’re lacking that core motivation.

Tell Those Closest To You About Your Problem, and Ask for Their Help

It can be really difficult to open up about a personal problem. Trust me, I know – some of the greatest personal challenges in my life have been ones that I’ve been hesitant to discuss with people in my life, even my wife.

However, if that other person genuinely loves you and deserves you, they will step up to the plate and help you with your goal in whatever way they can.

They’ll motivate you. They’ll do what they can to make positive choices easier for you. They’ll directly help you maintain the discipline you need to get there. Not only that, simply telling someone you care about what your goal is – and knowing that they’re watching you – becomes a powerful motivator and reinforcement for personal discipline.

Sarah is often a powerful supporter of my personal goals when I share them with her – and I support her goals, too. My closest friends will do the same, though without the intensity of Sarah.

Make a Full and Truthful Inventory of Your Recent Spending

We’ll often have a sense of how bad our spending decisions are, but we often don’t really know how bad they are. We’ll forget things or we’ll tell ourselves that things really aren’t all bad and that becomes enough for us to not really make any real changes in our life.

The best way to break through this barrier is to simply make a full and truthful inventory of your spending over the last three months or so. The easiest way to do that is to take all of your credit card and bank statements for those periods and go through those transactions step by step.

For a basic first step, try to divide all of the purchases into “essential” and “nonessential” purchases. Try hard to be realistic about this difference – basic food, clothing, and shelter are essential expenses, for instance, but high-end foods and restaurant meals are nonessential. All entertainment and hobby expenses are nonessential.

Once you’ve done that, look at your total nonessential spending. That’s how much you spent on unnecessary things in the last three months. Likely, that total amount is a shock to your system. It should be.

Imagine what even half of that money could do for other aspects of your life. Your debt begins to melt quite quickly. You can start saving for retirement. You can start saving for a down payment. You can do all of it if you just trim your nonessential spending in half.

Identify Patterns in That Inventory

One good way to get started on that kind of trimming is to look for some patterns in that inventory. Start sorting all of those expenses into groups that make sense to you.

One group might be meals eaten at restaurants; another might simply be fast food. Another group might be one of your hobbies, and a fourth group might be another hobby. You can choose the groupings however you’d like. Just look for things that your nonessential purchases have in common.

What you’ll soon see is that you don’t really overspend too much in some areas, but in others… wow. A lot of money vanishes in a pretty short period of time.

The example I like to use for this phenomenon is my own spending at the convenience store that was near the apartment where Sarah and I used to live. I used to walk over there each evening and buy a bottle of Gatorade and usually some small snack, like a bag of peanuts, and talk to the sweet elderly lady that worked behind the counter. I didn’t think much of it – the expense was always less than $5 – but if you figure that I basically did that every day when I wasn’t traveling, it added up. If you figure I averaged a $4 expense there and I went there 25 days per month, that’s $100 per month on Gatorade and peanuts.

Let me repeat that: $100 a month on Gatorade and peanuts.

There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with stopping for an occasional treat, but when it reaches that kind of routine, it eats you alive.

Put Strong Roadblocks in the Way of Those Patterns

Let’s keep digging into that “Gatorade and peanuts” example. Even if you assume that I really needed to drink 25 bottles of Gatorade a month and eat 25 small packages of peanuts, I could have just bought a bunch of Gatorade in bulk and a big container of peanuts at the warehouse club and saved 50% of the cost and still stopped in each day to say “hello” to that friend of mine.

That’s the kind of pattern you’re looking for – a pattern that you can tweak or cut back on without losing too much quality of life. If you are sincere about that, you’ll find a lot of patterns – and you’ll find a lot of ways to stick roadblocks in the way of those patterns.

I’ve mentioned a lot of these roadblocks on The Simple Dollar.

I used to often stop at a bookstore on my way home from work. I put a roadblock in the way of that by changing my route to go home, heading to the interstate directly instead of meandering through town to the next exit.

I used to stop for coffee and a bagel before work at this nice little coffee shop. I put a roadblock in the way of that by using my new commuting route, drinking coffee at work, and then eventually dropping the habit.

I used to buy Kindle books all the time. I put a roadblock in the way of that by deleting my Amazon password from all of my web browsers and removing my credit card number from Amazon.

I used to buy board games frequently from this one great online seller. I put a roadblock in the way of that by deleting my password from that seller and then changing the password to something really complicated that I couldn’t easily remember.

Roadblocks drastically slow down the purchases that you make routinely, causing you to make them less often and think more carefully about them when you make them.

Make a Full and Truthful Inventory of Those Who Are Negatively Affected By Your Addiction

The list of negative impacts of a spending addition on the addicted person is very long. They lose the ability to become debt free. They lose the ability to really enjoy and savor all of their purchases. They lose the ability to strongly save for retirement. They often introduce undue stress into their lives.

It’s easy to see the negative impact of your spending on your own life, but it often spreads out into the lives of the people around you.

Do you have a spouse? Every dollar that you’re overspending is a dollar directly taken out of your spouse’s pocket. It reduces your spouse’s ability to save for retirement. It reduces the ability of your partner to enjoy small splurges. It adds stress to your partner’s life, whether you see it or not.

Do you have children? Every dollar that you’re overspending affects your children, too. It takes away growth opportunities in their childhood because you can’t afford them with the remaining money after your overspending. It takes away from their college savings. If you’re stressed, it has a negative impact on their life and well being.

Do you have friends? Your own overspending is likely making them feel competitive with you in some ways, causing them to overspend and run into financial troubles, too. Other friends may not feel as connected to you because you don’t seem to share their values when you spend wildly.

Do you have elderly relatives who may be depending on you, such as ailing parents? Your overspending may be impacting their care. Maybe it’s directly, meaning that you don’t have adequate money to care for them. Maybe it’s indirectly, meaning that the stress from dealing with the consequences of overspending is altering their care.

Your overspending issues impact the people around you in a myriad of ways, both directly and indirectly. Those people need you to get a grip on your spending.

Plan for How to Make Things Right for Each Person Negatively Affected

Once you’ve thought about all of the people impacted by your spending, think about how correcting your overspending could actually have a great positive impact on your life.

For your spouse, it will probably reduce the personal stress in his or her life. It will likely also reduce some of the strain on your relationship. It will give your spouse a little more freedom to spend money on things they enjoy. It may give them the space to save more for retirement, too.

You can strengthen that rift by simply talking to your spouse about the changes you want to make, then embarking on those changes and actually walking the walk. The forward progress you make in the eyes of your spouse will have a tremendous impact on making things right.

For your children, cutting back on non-essential spending will reduce the secondary stress that they feel. You can also start doing things like increasing their educational opportunities and perhaps even saving for their college education.

You can increase the impact by spending more time with them when you’re not feeling stressed out by life, which will do nothing but improve your relationship with them.

For your friends, cutting back on frivolous spending will let them get some breathing room in any “keeping up with the Joneses” race they may feel with you. Also, low-spending habits can make more people feel comfortable hanging out when they realize they don’t need to spend big cash to do so.

You can get this ball rolling by suggesting low-cost activities to your friends, like having a dinner party or watching a movie together or going to a free concert or something like that. You can also try building a friendship with new people by using these low-cost activities. It’s pretty hard to say “no” when someone invites you to their home for dinner, after all.

For your older relatives, they’ll feel less stressed about the stability of the care and assistance they may need and less secondary stress from the way you’re behaving.

You can do this best by simply spending more low-stress time with the elderly people you care the most about. Time is one of the most valuable things you can give to the older people you care about.

Start making things right in the relationships in your life and you’ll be incredibly glad that you did.

Establish a Strong Debt Repayment Plan

One of the most important financial moves you can make for yourself once you commit to spending less is to give yourself an alternative way to sink your money that improves your financial state. A debt repayment plan is perfect for this – you can toss lots of money in there and it helps your finances out a lot.

A debt repayment plan is simple. It’s just a list of all of your debts, ordered by interest rate with the highest interest rate at the bottom.

All you do is commit to making minimum payments to each debt on that list without growing any of them, then making a larger additional payment to whatever debt is on top of that list.

So, let’s say you have a $20,000 student loan debt at 6% and a $10,000 credit card debt at 20%. Your minimum payment on the student loan might be $150 and your minimum payment on the credit card might be $200. That’s $350 in minimum payments. Now, let’s say you’ve managed to cut back on your spending and now have an extra $200 a month to improve your future. You apply that extra $200 a month to the credit card payment, so you’re paying $400 a month instead of $200 a month.

With just that simple move, you move from paying off that credit card in 109 months to paying it off in 33 months. If you can find another $200 a month, that changes it to just 20 months.

After that’s paid off, you can throw the full payment from the credit card into an extra payment on the student loan. So, if you were paying a $200 minimum payment and a $200 additional payment on the credit card, you can now make a $400 additional payment on the student loan. Because of that, instead of paying off that loan in 221 months – about 18 years – you’ll pay it off in 41 months – just a smidge over 3 years. Add another $200 to that payment and you’ll have it gone in 29 months – just a smidge over two years.

In other words, if you don’t make extra payments, it would literally take you almost two decades to eliminate both loans. If you make a $200 extra payment on the first debt and carry all of that over to the second, you pay the whole thing off in just shy of six years. If you make a $400 extra payment, you’ll pay the whole thing off in four years.

That’s the impact of a debt repayment plan, and it’s something you can harness when you get your spending under control. The spending you cut back on becomes the rocket fuel for that debt repayment plan.

Establish a Healthy Simple Budget That You Can Stick To

For most people, the primary benefit of a budget is that it gives them a real picture of their finances, something you did earlier on in this plan. However, there’s still another benefit in continuing to assemble a budget – you can give yourself a spending cap on the non-essential areas of your life.

For myself, I have a spending cap each month for non-essential spending. All of my hobbies come out of that spending cap and, if I don’t have enough, the purchase waits until next month. However, if I still have money here, I can buy whatever I want related to my hobbies. It’s basically a line item in my budget.

Putting that cap on my non-essential spending was almost revolutionary to me. It might seem constraining at first glance, but it actually had a secret benefit: that spending was guilt free.

Whenever I spent money on non-essential things before, I always felt a pang of guilt because I knew that money was taking away from something else I needed to be doing in my life. I wasn’t saving for retirement, so I felt guilty. I wasn’t paying off debt, so I felt guilty. I wasn’t saving for educational expenses, so I felt guilty. My overspending was letting down other areas of my life.

Once we started budgeting and I knew that I was covering all of those things and I had some money left over for non-essential spending, I didn’t feel guilty any more about spending that money. I knew that my bases were covered.

It feels great. Sure, I don’t have as much to spend freely as I once did, but I don’t feel guilty about what I spend. That allows me to enjoy the things I buy with that money far more than before and that enjoyment tends to really last, whereas before it would be clouded with a bit of guilt.

Final Thoughts

Many of the strategies for defeating a spending addiction are pretty similar to those that you use to defeat any other addiction. It starts with honesty with yourself and builds to having responsibility toward others and having a plan in place to keep yourself honest.

Overcoming a spending addiction is one of the most powerful things you can do for your own finances. Good luck in your journey if you choose to take this road.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/ten-strategies-for-beating-a-spending-addiction/feed/0Everything You Need to Know About Listening to Podcasts, My Favorite Free Form of Entertainmenthttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-listening-to-podcasts-my-favorite-free-form-of-entertainment/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-listening-to-podcasts-my-favorite-free-form-of-entertainment/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 14:00:18 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=35330I spend the equivalent of a full-time job working at my computer or laptop, and that’s usually with audio turned on. On top of that, I have my cell phone almost everywhere with me and when I’m in the car; I usually plug it in and listen to the audio through my car’s speaker system. What ...

I spend the equivalent of a full-time job working at my computer or laptop, and that’s usually with audio turned on. On top of that, I have my cell phone almost everywhere with me and when I’m in the car; I usually plug it in and listen to the audio through my car’s speaker system.

What do I listen to? Podcasts.

Podcasts are free audio programs distributed over the Internet. You can download them and listen to them as you please, essentially creating a radio station focused entirely on the topics you want to listen to. There are podcasts out there covering almost any topic that you can imagine – and probably dozens of podcasts on that topic.

Because you can choose programs that match your interests and can swap programs in and out as you wish, it becomes much like having a customized radio station for yourself that you can even take with you wherever you go if you have a smartphone.

What are the basic things I need to know?

Podcasts really aren’t that different than any other kind of radio program. The only difference is that podcast creators distribute the episodes of their program over the Internet for everyone to listen to rather than using a traditional radio station.

Because podcasting is a very “do it yourself” format, podcasts vary greatly in quality. Some are recorded in professional studios, others in nice home studios with great microphones, and still others are recorded on a cell phone or with a simple cheap microphone. Some are hosted by people with great radio voices, while others are hosted by people who are excitedly nervous. I actually like this and consider it a feature; it’s really cool to listen to a podcast from someone who is doing it just because they love the topic they’re talking about.

How do people find interesting podcasts to listen to? Most of the time, people listen to podcasts using a podcast manager. A podcast manager is simply a piece of software that helps you find podcasts to listen to and keeps track of which podcast episodes you’ve listened to (and which ones you’ve haven’t). One feature that most podcast managers have is to simply listen to all of your unlistened podcast episodes.

Most of the time, people use their podcast manager software to find a new podcast and then they listen to an episode or two. If they like what they hear, they can usually subscribe to that podcast. What that means is that when a new episode of that podcast is released, that new episode appears almost immediately in your podcast manager so you can listen to it at your convenience.

Many popular programs already on the radio – particularly public radio programs – are also available in podcast form, so you can mix those in with other podcasts that don’t actually air on a radio station.

How do I listen to podcasts?

There are a lot of podcast managers out there that you can use to listen to and subscribe to podcasts. Here are a few of those options.

Desktop

Desktop programs allow you to download podcasts to your personal computer. These are the best options if you just use a single computer and perhaps sync that computer with a portable mp3 player.

iTunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/) is easily the most ubiquitous podcast management tool. It works spectacularly well as a desktop podcast manager and allows you to easily find podcasts to listen to for free through the iTunes Store. It also has stellar integration with iDevices – iPhones, iPods, and iPads – so if you use those devices on the go, you can keep your list of subscribed podcasts and your record of listened-to and unlistened episodes in sync effortlessly.

gPodder (http://gpodder.org/) is probably the best desktop alternative to iTunes. It also has an integrated podcast directory that makes it easy to find new podcasts to listen to with just a few clicks and integrates well with Android mobile devices.

Web-Based

These options allow you to play podcasts directly from your web browser. These are great if you move from computer to computer and device to device but always have access to wi-fi and aren’t relying on a cellular data plan. Web-based podcast managers usually rely on streaming audio to present the sound to you, so if you’re going to be using a cellular Internet connection, it’s going to devour your data plan, so be careful.

ShortOrange (http://shortorange.com/) is probably my favorite of this group as it offers a great and easy-to-use interface on both desktop and mobile web browsers and you can play around with it without having an account (though it won’t track subscriptions or listens for you). If you tend to alternate between a desktop and a laptop for podcast listening, this is probably my recommendation.

Player.FM (https://player.fm/) is similar to ShortOrange but offers dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, which I consider a nice perk. If you alternate between a wide variety of desktop and mobile devices, this is probably the best choice.

Mobile

If you listen to podcasts primarily or exclusively on mobile devices, you have a lot of options. Here are two that really stand out.

Overcast (https://overcast.fm/) is easily my favorite podcast manager for iOS. It just works exactly as I want in my head. In fact, if they improved the web interface, it would be my only podcast manager. If you’re just listening using iOS almost all of the time and rarely listen elsewhere, this is my top recommendation.

Pocket Casts (http://www.shiftyjelly.com/pocketcasts), on the other hand, is my recommendation for Android users. It features a great interface, syncs well across multiple Android devices, and is very smart about downloading episodes when you’re around wi-fi instead of using mobile data.

How do I find podcasts to listen to?

All of the podcast managers I mention above are integrated with a great podcast directory that enable you to easily look for podcast recommendations based on topic, as well as look up podcasts by name (if you know the name of a particular one you want to listen to).

The “recommendation” engine varies a lot from podcast manager to podcast manager, but most of them make it easy to just browse through a list of topics – entertainment, games, sports, news, history, and so on – and then see lists of either the most popular podcasts in that topic or recommendations within that topic. If the categories are broad, there are usually dozens of popular podcasts within that topic.

There are many, many lists of great podcasts floating around on countless different websites. Just go to Google, type in a topic you like, and then follow that with the words “top podcasts,” and you’ll get a list of podcasts on that subject. (If you don’t get a good list, change your topic to something slightly more general, like switching “Philadelphia 76ers” to “NBA”).

What are some podcasts that you recommend?

This is kind of like drinking from a fire hose. There are many, many podcasts out there that I enjoy listening to and these just offer a sampling of those options. I am generally subscribed to somewhere around 50 podcasts at any given time and that roster rotates constantly as I try out new podcasts and drop other ones (not because I don’t enjoy them, but because there’s such a bounty of great podcasts out there).

Here are twenty podcasts that I really, really enjoy and I generally stay subscribed to all the time. A few of these are replays of radio programs, so you may have heard them before on your local NPR station, for example.

Serial is a season-based podcast where a single story is discussed in detail over a dozen (or so) episodes. The first season of Serial – which you can download in its entirety for about eight hours of listening – covers the details of a mysterious murder case in Baltimore, digging into the case in such nuance that you can’t help but wonder whether or not the courts actually understood things to that level of detail. If you enjoy mysteries, then you’ll love it. The depth here brings things to life.

This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program that’s often aired on public radio stations. Each episode of the show focuses on one particular aspect of American life – one recent episode focuses on how Americans express anger, while another one focuses on how police see many situations differently than other citizens do. The episodes are usually broken up into a handful of segments, each with different people doing the presentation, giving it a surprising amount of variety within the topic of the day.

Radiolab focuses on scientific and philosophical topics, taking a broad topic like football and looking at it from a number of different angles, some very analytic and some not so analytic. This is usually done with a light touch and a nice sense of humor that makes for very enjoyable and sometimes thoughtful listening. Most episodes are about an hour in length, with some shorter episodes popping up from time to time, and there’s a fresh episode every week or two.

Hardcore History is a irregularly-produced podcast that focuses on incredibly deep and thorough coverage of a historical event, almost coming off like an extremely well done audiobook. For example, the host, Dan Carlin, has recently covered World War I in a five episode series with each episode lasting two to three hours. Carlin keeps the topic interesting by turning historical events into a narrative story and often describes how events of the past impact our lives today. I love it when a new episode of this pops up.

Tiny Desk Concerts is a series of short concerts performed in the offices of National Public Radio by a wide variety of musicians. You’ll hear everything from folk and country and Americana to rock and pop and classical and electronica and hip-hop and almost anything else you can imagine.

Sword and Laser is a weekly podcast hosted by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont that focuses on fantasy and science fiction books and short stories. They interview lots of authors and have a monthly “book club” where they select a book, give brief non-spoilerish discussions of it over the next few episodes, then have an all-spoilers discussion of it after that before selecting another one.

99% Invisible is a podcast focusing on design topics. How are things made? What about the decisions in the details of making things? The host Roman Mars tackles all kinds of different elements of design in a great discussion-oriented weekly podcast that lasts about thirty minutes per episode.

I enjoy sports, but I often get fed up with the bombast of sports discussions which often end with shouting or people yelling catchphrases. This one’s different. Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca host a weekly 90 minute podcast that discusses sports from a variety of angles without getting caught up in the shouting and emotion that often fill other discussions of sports on the radio (and on television for that matter).

This podcast, hosted by Michael Hyatt, is focused on what he calls “intentional leadership,” meaning that it’s a weekly discussion of the personal attributes and characteristics of what makes a great leader and how a person can cultivate them. This show really clicks when guests are brought on for discussions. The show branches out into things like personal growth, productivity, and other issues, but is always handled so smartly.

State of the Re:Union is a brilliant show hosted by Al Letson where he visits and looks at the challenges and issues facing one particular town or city in the United States each episode. He might look at a large city in the Pacific Northwest one episode, then hit a smaller city in the Heartland, then examine a tiny town in the South the next week. By looking at the nation from this town by town perspective, it begins to become clear that we all actually have a lot more in common than we think. This show has done more to help me reflect on the differences and commonalities among Americans than almost anything I’ve ever experienced.

Fresh Air is an hour-long daily interview program from NPR hosted by Terry Gross. The show mostly focuses on a single long interview with a single guest, but the guests have incredible variety from episode to episode. She might interview a politician one episode, a rock star in another, a writer in another, then a film star in another. It’s that variety that keeps me coming back for more.

Planet Money is a twice-weekly podcast produced by NPR that focuses on economic and personal finance news and perspectives. Planet Money is hosted by a fairly large staff that bring to life that connection between your day-to-day life and large-scale economic issues like the rise of the American dollar against foreign currencies. I firmly believe that letting this podcast run in the background sometimes inspires articles for The Simple Dollar in the back of my head.

The Pen Addict is a weekly hourlong show hosted by Brad Dowdy and Myke Hurley that focuses on pens, paper, and other analog tools. It’s a very niche topic but the incredible enthusiasm of the hosts really carry the show.

This is another show hosted by Dan Carlin (who also hosts Hardcore History, mentioned earlier) where the host discusses current events and politics in America. The host seems to try to find unique angles on the issues that don’t really fit into the usual liberal-conservative spectrum and usually leaves me thinking about current events in a new way – which is why I love it.

Marketplace is a daily (weekdays at least) radio program from American Public Media that’s shared in podcast form. Currently hosted by Kai Ryssdal, the show focuses mostly on business and economic issues, but is done in such a light and interesting fashion with some incredibly catchy music used to separate segments.

The Moth is just people telling stories, nothing more, nothing less. The podcast is simply audio recordings of live events where people get up on stage and tell a story about their life. It is incredibly human and leaves you fascinated with the varieties of human experience that exist in the world today.

This is a bizarre little mixed bag of things. The hosts, Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag, spend each episode answering a handful of “how do I…” questions on a wide variety of things. They might talk about how to make cheese in your basement then talk about how to cut ties with an old friend who has suddenly gotten weirdly political. The variety – and the enthusiasm of the hosts – makes this crazy mix work.

The Dice Tower is a podcast about board and card games hosted by Tom Vasel and Eric Summerer. The hosts have great enthusiasm for the topic and have no problem filling an hour a week with all kinds of discussion about new game releases, classic games, horrible (and great) gaming experiences, and so on.

TED Radio Hour is an hourlong show consisting of short talks on a shared topic by a variety of contributors. One week, the topic might be “love;” another week might center on “fears” or “secrets.” Often, the short topics focus on current research in those areas, while some of the topics might focus on applicable advice. The mix of voices and ideas adds up to brilliance.

Welcome to Night Vale is perhaps the strangest entry on this list. Each episode of the show takes the form of a “local news” radio program from a fictional town where strange and bizarre things happen. The show clicks because there are so many continued threads and stories from episode to episode that overlap in interesting ways. It starts a bit slow – you have to give it time – but it grows into a brilliant story that leaves you looking forward to the next episode each time. This is a podcast well worth starting from the beginning.

Final Thoughts

Podcasts are essentially a method for creating your own radio station, full of shows on topics you’re interested in and hosted by people who you like. If you don’t like a show, you have complete power to effectively cancel it by just hitting the “delete” button. You can listen to podcasts at home, when you’re walking, when you’re commuting, or pretty much anywhere else. You only hear repeats if you choose to hear repeats, so it’s always fresh.

In terms of sheer hours, podcasts have easily been my primary form of entertainment over the past several years. They play in the background when I’m working and they fill the air in the vehicle whenever I drive anywhere. I deeply enjoy listening to a wide variety of enthusiastic people discussing a wide variety of topics I enjoy. It never, ever gets old – after all, there’s always a new podcast around the corner to listen to.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-listening-to-podcasts-my-favorite-free-form-of-entertainment/feed/012 Wildly Romantic Gestures in Movieshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/12-wildly-romantic-gestures-in-film-that-you-could-do-for-free/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/12-wildly-romantic-gestures-in-film-that-you-could-do-for-free/#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 17:00:35 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=33346&preview_id=33346Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is frugal, too. Sure, splurging on a diamond necklace, an exotic getaway, a cherished memento, or a fancy dinner out are lovely ways to show your partner how much you care. But sometimes the most powerful romantic gestures don’t cost a thing — just some time, thought, and ...

Sure, splurging on a diamond necklace, an exotic getaway, a cherished memento, or a fancy dinner out are lovely ways to show your partner how much you care. But sometimes the most powerful romantic gestures don’t cost a thing — just some time, thought, and effort.

Want to wow your loved one this Valentine’s Day without spending a fortune? Hollywood can offer some inspiration. We’ve gathered a dozen of the most romantic gestures in movie history that were totally free.

But, before you try to replicate these, keep in mind that you don’t have a script, a director, or 20 takes to get it right.

“Watching a romantic gesture and actually performing it in real life are two very different things,” says media critic Robert Thompson, trustee professor and founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “You don’t have boom mics and sound people and lighting … so tread carefully. As well as it may work in that movie, it really can come off as pathetic in real life.”

That’s not to say you can’t adapt some of these famous movie moments for your own relationship. Grand romantic gestures tend to follow certain themes, Thompson says.

“There are a couple of basic themes. One gesture is all about, ‘I love you and I don’t care how many people know it.’ From boomboxes to Jumbotrons to skywriting — showing you’re totally committed and you’re willing to announce it to the world,” Thompson says.

Perhaps no gesture is as free, or more romantic, than simply telling someone how you honestly feel with a public declaration of your love. Women value emotional honesty in their relationships, according to Psychology Today, and men want to feel appreciated. So tell your partner how you feel, and how he or she makes you feel.

Another common theme? “The second [theme] is where some kind of concession is being made,” Thompson says. On a grand scale, this might mean quitting smoking or ditching your two-seat sports car for a family sedan. But little concessions add up, too.

In fact, Thompson says, letting your partner pick the next romantic movie you watch might be the perfect example of such a concession.

“Your best bet to make one of these grand romantic gestures is not to do the thing portrayed in the film, but to go to one of those movies with the person you’re trying to impress,” Thompson says. “If a husband really wants to impress his wife, he’ll throw up his arms and say, ‘OK, I’ll watch “The Notebook” with you!’ That in itself is a big gesture.”

Turn Up Outside Her Window: ‘Say Anything’

Anyone who’s ever been dumped or longed for love — and that’s most of us — can relate to the iconic boombox scene. Lovable slacker Lloyd Dobbler (John Cusack) falls for class valedictorian Diane Court. Even though she’s out of his league, Diane agrees to go out with him, and eventually falls for him.

Later in the film, Diane’s father persuades her to break up with Lloyd. Dumped and heartbroken, Lloyd shows up outside her bedroom window. He holds a boombox above his head, blasting “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel — the song that punctuated their most passionate moments — daring her not to feel something.

Runner-Up: ‘Romeo & Juliet’

There’s a reason lovelorn guys have been calling up to girls’ windows for hundreds of years, and that reason is Romeo Montague.

Selfless Acts of Devotion: ‘The Notebook’

OK, there’s plenty to choose from in this movie. But one of the most romantic things I can imagine is what Noah does for Allie in their older years.

Allie’s suffering from dementia, and no longer recognizes the love of her life. But Noah still goes to the nursing home each day, as a stranger to her, and reads her their love story.

Even when he’s finally able to break through the fog of her Alzheimer’s, it lasts just a painfully fleeting few minutes. But what wouldn’t you do for just a few more minutes with the one you love after they’ve gone?

Runner-Up: ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’

Just-friend Watts agrees to chauffeur Keith and Amanda on their extravagant date, even though she’s in love with Keith.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Messy: ‘Ghost’

In this famous love scene, Sam (Patrick Swayze) interrupts Molly (Demi Moore) while she’s working on the pottery wheel late one night. Against the hauntingly beautiful backdrop of “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers, it gets messy, and it gets steamy.

The moral of the story? Make room for romance, even if it’s not the ideal time or place. You can clean up a mess, and you can finish working later, but you can never get back a missed opportunity to spend time with the one you love.

Runners-Up: ‘The Princess Bride’ and ‘Forrest Gump’

Robin Wright isn’t afraid of mucking up a dress. Playing Buttercup in “The Princess Bride,” she realizes she’s tossed her true love down a steep hillside — so she throws herself tumbling after him. And at the March on Washington in “Forrest Gump,” Forrest (Tom Hanks) is on stage when his childhood friend Jenny (Wright) — the girl he loves but has lost track of over the years — runs into the reflecting pool shouting his name. Forrest bolts through the crowd of thousands and jumps right in with her.

Musical Serenade: ‘The Wedding Singer’

Waitress Julia (Drew Barrymore) is engaged to a cheating business jerk. She and Robbie (Adam Sandler), a wedding singer at the function hall she works at, form a friendship — and start to fall for each other.

But, in typical romantic comedy fashion — particularly in the pre-cellphone era — miscommunication stirs trouble and hurt feelings. Though in love with Robbie, Julia decides to fly to Las Vegas with her rich fiance to get married. Robbie races to the airport to stop them, and, with the help of the flight crew and first-class passenger Billy Idol, serenades Julia with a song he wrote for her.

Beyond the epic, last-chance dash to the airport is a more genuine and realistic sentiment. Robbie’s song, called “Grow Old With You,” is sweet, silly, and sincere … the stuff that real love is all about: “I wanna make you smile whenever you’re sad / Carry you around when your arthritis is bad / All I wanna do is grow old with you / I’ll get your medicine when your tummy aches / Build you a fire if the furnace breaks / Oh it could be so nice, growing old with you.”

Make a Run for It: ‘Love Actually’

Most people swoon over a different scene in this movie — the one where the guy shows up at the door and silently holds up giant cue cards to tell his best friend’s wife that he loves her and thinks she’s perfect. Sure, it’s sweet, but c’mon — it’s his best friend’s wife.

That’s why I like the little kid ducking past airport security — with a bit of encouragement from dad Liam Neeson — and running through the gate to tell his classmate how he feels about her before she flies off. He’s taking a risk, putting it all on the line, and he’s overcome with that magical adrenaline of love.

This is certainly one of those don’t-try-this-at-home scenes Thompson warns about, though. Running past security at Heathrow Airport, even if you’re a cute grade-school kid, is never going to end well. Telling a girl how you feel is romantic. Getting detained and, let’s face it, quite possibly tortured after setting off a terrorist scare at the world’s busiest airport? Not so much.

Runner-Up: ‘When Harry Met Sally’

On New Year’s Eve, Harry finally realizes he’s in love with his longtime friend, Sally. He sprints through the city to meet her at a party for midnight, tells her all the reasons he loves her, and ends with, “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

Benevolent Manipulation: ‘Life Is Beautiful’

This movie is all about love: love for your spouse, your child, and life itself. To get there, though, Guido first has to woo Dora, and he orchestrates all kinds of “coincidences” to help his case.

With a little luck and charm, and by paying attention to the daily routines around the village — knowing exactly what certain people say in certain situations — he’s able to make it seem as if heaven has blessed their first date.

Runner-Up: ‘Amelie’

Amelie sets up an elaborate trail of clues to ask out the guy she’s fallen for, Nino. Eventually she uses a similar approach to help Nino encounter the mystery photo booth man who fascinates him.

Make a Wish Come True: ‘The Fault in Our Stars’

Hazel and Augustus are teens who meet in a cancer support club.

Hazel is obsessed with a book called “An Imperial Affliction,” whose author is a reclusive genius. The book’s puzzling ending consumes her. She’s written the author dozens of letters to ask questions about it, but she’s never received an answer.

However, Augustus is finally able to track him down by contacting his publishing house and emailing his assistant. He then gives up his one and only wish that he received from “The Genies” (a fictionalized version of the Make-a-Wish Foundation), granted to him when he was first diagnosed with cancer, so Hazel can go to Amsterdam to meet her hero.

Honestly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Augustus Waters and romance. But we had to choose something.

Runner-Up: ‘A Walk to Remember’

Though Jamie is dying of leukemia, Landon helps her cross off items on her bucket list, like being in two places at once and seeing a comet in the spring. We should add: Your partner doesn’t need to be dying of cancer or leukemia for you to make their wish come true!

Chivalry and Defense of Honor: ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

This wickedly funny movie may seem like an unlikely winner in the chivalry category. But even after Rachel (Mila Kunis) rejects him, Peter (Jason Segel), on his way out of town, takes down the topless photo of Rachel at a local bar that has bothered her for years. He does it without her knowing, and despite enduring a savage beatdown from the bar owner. That’s love.

Runner-Up: ‘Back to the Future’

Without any help from his future son Marty (Michael J. Fox), wimpy George McFly summons the courage to knock out drunken bully Biff and protect Lorraine from his aggressive advances — saving Marty’s future and his.

Self-Improvement: ‘Groundhog Day’

Cynical TV weatherman Phil (Bill Murray) is trapped in Punxsutawney, Pa., on Feb. 2, in a 24-hour loop. Every morning, it’s Feb. 2. After realizing and accepting his situation, he first experiments with womanizing, crime, and even suicide.

But in this endless workday, he starts to realize he has feelings for his kind and sincere co-worker Rita (Andie MacDowell). His attempts to seduce her fail, until finally he uses his excess of time to become the kind of man worthy of Rita’s affection: He learns to play the piano, sculpt her face in the snow, and speak French. More importantly, he opens his heart to the people in the town and becomes the kind, humble, and generous man Rita had been looking for.

Runner up: ‘Singles’

All Janet (Bridget Fonda) wants is a guy to say “Bless you” when she sneezes. But her self-absorbed musician boyfriend Cliff (Matt Dillon) just doesn’t care — until finally, at the end of the film, he says, “Bless you,” when she sneezes in the elevator.

Be Honest, and Accept Your Partner’s Faults: ‘Moonrise Kingdom’

On a fictional, Wes Anderson-imagined island in the 1960s, lovestruck 12-year-olds Sam and Suzy run away together. They set up a tent on the beach, and before going to bed, Sam tells Suzy it’s possible he might wet the bed later. “I wish I didn’t have to mention it, but just in case,” he says. “I don’t want to make you be offended.” She’s okay with it.

And after Suzy tells Sam, an orphan, that she always wished she’d been an orphan because their lives seem more special, he tells her honestly, “I love you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Honesty and communication are the foundations of any healthy long-term relationship, and what’s more romantic than that?

Relentless Pursuit: ‘The Princess Bride’

In probably the most epic sequence on this list, Westley never gives up on trying to be with his one true love, even if that means defeating a swordsman, a giant, a genius, a fire swamp, death itself, and an evil prince, and maintaining a sharp wit through all of it. Don’t try this at home.

Runner-Up: ‘The Graduate’

In this famous final scene, Ben (Dustin Hoffman) speeds down the California coast to the church where Elaine (Katharine Ross) is getting married. Running out of gas, he sprints the last leg, enters the church as the bride and groom are kissing, and pounds on the glass, shouting Elaine’s name wildly. A melee ensues. (Again: Don’t try this at home.)

…But if You Really Love Someone, Let Them Go: ‘Casablanca’

American ex-pat Rick (Humphrey Bogart) runs a popular “gin joint” in early World War II-era Morocco. His one-time lover Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) arrives in town with her husband — the reason Ilsa ran out on Rick in Paris years ago, leaving him bitter and heartbroken.

As tension mounts and they rekindle memories of their affair, it starts to look like Rick and Ilsa will finally be together. But Rick ultimately cares more about Ilsa’s safety and security than his selfish desire to be with her, telling her she’ll regret it if she doesn’t escape to the United States with her husband: “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.”

But, he says, “We’ll always have Paris.”

What are your favorite, free romantic movie moments? Tell us in the comments!

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/12-wildly-romantic-gestures-in-film-that-you-could-do-for-free/feed/0Cheap, Fun Things Singles Can Do on Valentine’s Dayhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/cheap-fun-things-singles-can-do-on-valentines-day/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/cheap-fun-things-singles-can-do-on-valentines-day/#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 12:00:08 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=34364&preview_id=34364In Seattle, home to so many of the nation’s hipsters, Valentine’s Day has taken on some very unique incarnations among the singles crowd. Just ask Alexandra Chauran, a local fortuneteller. Each year Chauran’s services are booked weeks, even months in advance of Valentine’s Day by those not in a relationship. “I get booked by groups ...

Will you find love this year? Get some friends together to share the cost of a psychic reading, and maybe you’ll find out. Photo: Patrick Emerson

In Seattle, home to so many of the nation’s hipsters, Valentine’s Day has taken on some very unique incarnations among the singles crowd. Just ask Alexandra Chauran, a local fortuneteller.

Each year Chauran’s services are booked weeks, even months in advance of Valentine’s Day by those not in a relationship.

“I get booked by groups of single friends who split the bill for my hourly office fee and have fun getting their fortunes told about the future of their love lives,” says Chauran.

The Valentine’s Day fun for singles, however, doesn’t end there.

Typically during the evening, Chauran is booked for “anti-Valentine’s” parties, which she says have become quite popular in the Seattle area.

“They may be a regional thing,” she says of the widespread parties, where she reads wine sediments (very similar to reading tea leaves) for partygoers. “It’s pretty fun and it sure beats going out to a restaurant packed full of couples.

“Valentine’s Day has always been one of the busiest times of the year for me,” says Chauran, whose services cost $125 for the first hour. That becomes more affordable when split among a crowd. “Along with Halloween and New Year’s Eve. Because they all have people thinking about their future.”

In New York City, singles have some equally intriguing and inexpensive options for passing the holiday, if perhaps more artsy or physical.

The Ailey Extension, for example, is offering two inexpensive dance workshops on Valentine’s Day that are ideal for singles.

The Valentine’s Day Salsa Class, offered from 8-9:30 p.m. ET, requires no partner to participate. People from all walks of life are invited to enjoy learning to salsa. An added bonus: Dance partners will rotate throughout the evening, so it’s a great opportunity to meet new people.

The school also offers a Valentine’s Day Zumba Dance class from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET on Feb. 14, giving singles a chance to kick off the day with a dance party workout. Participation in either class is $25.

According to a poll done by It’s Just Lunch, 52% of unattached singles plan to surround themselves with the love and camaraderie of good friends on Valentine’s Day. Another 23% of unattached singles will enjoy the day of love by pampering themselves with a special treat.

Here are some additional suggestions for singles seeking to pass Valentine’s Day with a combination of fun, love, and affordability:

Share your love: One of the most popular suggestions for singles seeking to make the most of this holiday designed for couples is to spend the day or evening volunteering at a food bank or soup kitchen. Soup kitchens in particular are eager for assistance and typically do not have an onerous vetting process to go through in order to sign up.

“I’m a big believer in giving back, because it will make you feel good,” says It’s Just Lunch spokeswoman Irene LaCota.

Host a BYOB & F (Friend) party: Host a party and ask all of your friends to bring a friend of the opposite sex — making the party a great way to expand your network of friends, as well as potential pool of dating partners.

Hit the sale rack: Valentine’s Day shares a weekend with Presidents Day, a big sale holiday, which means clearance winter apparel will be even more of a steal, says Kendal Perez, a savings expert with Coupon Sherpa, who adds that you can likely nab a new arrival for 20% to 30% less thanks to the sales.

Speed dating: There’s nothing like a good game of speed dating or other singles events on Valentine’s Day. Look online or in your local newspaper for activities for singles close to home. It’s a fun, inexpensive way to meet people. The added bonus of such events is that cuddly, kissing couples won’t be crossing your path at every turn.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/cheap-fun-things-singles-can-do-on-valentines-day/feed/0How to Save Money When You’re Singlehttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-save-money-when-youre-single/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-save-money-when-youre-single/#commentsFri, 02 Jan 2015 12:00:53 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=32075&preview_id=32075If you’re single and haven’t been told to buy a crock pot, consider yourself lucky. It’s probably a sign that you’re doing a fine job making ends meet and saving money for retirement. Buying a slow cooker is probably one of the more popular refrains when it comes to frugal living tips for singles. And with good ...

Crock pots are great, but they’re not the only way for singles to save money. Photo: Janine

If you’re single and haven’t been told to buy a crock pot, consider yourself lucky. It’s probably a sign that you’re doing a fine job making ends meet and saving money for retirement.

Buying a slow cooker is probably one of the more popular refrains when it comes to frugal living tips for singles. And with good reason: Those with a crock pot spend far less money dining out, right? Put some food in the pot before you head to work each morning and, voila, when you come home, dinner is served, and there’s enough left over for the next day, too.

All of this is important because single people who lived alone in 2013 spent, on average, $3,654 on food, more than 40% of which was for dining out, according to the federal government’s Consumer Expenditure Survey. By contrast, a family of four only spent about $2,400 per person.

So there’s clearly some room for cutting back among singles when it comes to food expenditures and eating habits. But there’s savings to be had in other areas as well among this segment of the population, according to various financial experts.

In a world bursting with new technology and new offerings in the sharing economy, what are some of the latest ideas to help singles spend less or offset living costs? As we embark upon 2015, perhaps start thinking outside the box a little when it comes to cutting costs. Here are a few ideas:

Offset Car Costs with Peer-to-Peer Services

If you haven’t heard of peer-to-peer services such as Lyft, Uber, or Taskrabbit, it’s time to get up to speed because they can help offset your car costs. And with the average cost of operating a car hovering around $9,000 annually, according to auto club AAA, this is one area you can definitely recoup a bit of money.

Let’s start with Taskrabbit, which is in 19 cities and counting. This peer-to-peer service allows you to run errands for people in your community who need help. Taskers, as they’re called, do shopping, make deliveries, and many other things.

On his way back from a friend’s house, the airport, or grocery shopping, business writer and Internet analyst Brad Hines says he will occasionally go “on duty” and do an errand for Taskrabbit, turning the trip into a profitable one.

You can, too. Especially if you’re single and don’t have family obligations requiring you to rush home.

Lyft, meanwhile, is a ride-sharing service that matches drivers with passengers who request rides through a smartphone app. The company pays drivers up to $35 an hour. That extra income is taxed, but miles you drive while on duty are tax deductible. This year’s government rate is 56 cents a mile.

Finally, what about giving up your car altogether? If you’re able to walk, bike, or take public transit to work and other essential destinations, you might only need a car for weekend trips or for the occasional big shopping run. Consider whether using a car-sharing service such as ZipCar could save you money.

Entertainment

It’s never been easier to say goodbye to expensive cable television providers, what with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Roku, and more.

As a single person who may spend little time at home, why pay more than $100 every month for cable television you barely watch? Instead, sign up for an Amazon Prime or Netflix account and watch videos and movies for free.

Or buy a Roku, a small black box that connects to your television, allowing you to stream TV shows and movies, even Netflix and Blockbuster on Demand. Many people are unaware of just how much content is available via Roku, which involves a one-time cost of about $78 (a lot cheaper than spending upwards of $1,200 annually on cable).

I bought a Roku months ago after canceling my cable and haven’t paid a bill to watch television or movies since. It’s amazing how good that feels each month.

Offset Mortgage or Rental Costs

If your home or apartment has extra space, why not make money from it to offset your mortgage or rent?

Airbnb is probably one of the safest and most popular approaches to doing this. Started in 2008, Airbnb is a website where people can list extra rooms or entire homes for rent. There’s no charge to post rentals on the site, which now has more than 800,000 listings in 33,000 cities throughout 192 countries.

Texas-based financial advisor Katie Brewer, who specializes in working with Gen X and Gen Y, will often ask such clients: If you have a three-bedroom house, what’s worth more to you — having all that space to yourself all the time, or extra money to pay the mortgage or rent? Read more about making money as an Airbnb host here.

Discounted Dining Out via Living Social or Groupon

Back to the subject of singles and food expenses: Cooking a meal for just you or eating alone isn’t always fun. So if you’re going to dine out, take advantage of restaurants that offer specials on certain nights and, more importantly, consider signing up for websites like Groupon and Living Social. Both regularly provide discounted dining opportunities.

An added bonus: Both sites also provide discounts on a ton of activities that can make for great dates, says Kevin Maher, a community outreach coordinator with Debthelper.com, a nonprofit debt and credit counseling service.

Own Less Stuff and Make Money From What You Do Own

Do you have a snowboard you don’t use much anymore? Or perhaps a great road bike that you rarely ride? The latest chapter in the peer-to-peer economy involves renting out your household items that perhaps you don’t use every day.

There are now websites, such as Zilok, that function as middlemen, allowing you to make money renting out such items.

The flip side of this trend is the ability to save money by renting items that you might normally spend money buying. Everything from ladders to espresso machines is available on Zilok, so the next time you have the urge to run to the store and buy something — particularly something you wouldn’t use every day — consider renting it instead.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-save-money-when-youre-single/feed/0Disney on a Budget: Managing the Magic for Lesshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/disney-on-a-budget-managing-the-magic-for-less/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/disney-on-a-budget-managing-the-magic-for-less/#commentsWed, 24 Dec 2014 17:00:00 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=32367&preview_id=32367I’ll admit it – I have a serious Disney addiction. Not as bad as some, it’s true. (I know a woman who logs in to online meetings at work as “Cinderella.”) But for moms like me, there’s nothing like a Disney vacation, especially around the holidays. Literally the whole family has fun. Decorations, cookies, and ...

Surprising the kids with a dream trip to Disney? Don’t let it become a financial nightmare. Photo: Walt Disney World

I’ll admit it – I have a serious Disney addiction. Not as bad as some, it’s true. (I know a woman who logs in to online meetings at work as “Cinderella.”) But for moms like me, there’s nothing like a Disney vacation, especially around the holidays.

Literally the whole family has fun. Decorations, cookies, and carols abound. They even replace the holiday flowers each night while you sleep. In real life, I’ve waited basically forever for anyone to replace the mangy planters on my front walk.

All this enchantment comes with a price tag, of course, but luckily there are ways to swing a dream trip without selling your house or your organs. Below are some tips targeted to Disney World, but many hold true for Disneyland and other Disney properties too.

Consider Staying On-Site

Disney World offers three levels of elaborately themed hotels – deluxe, moderate, and value – plus a campground where stays start below $100 a night. It may sound counter-intuitive, but choosing an on-site hotel eliminates the need for a rental car, as free buses run from the Orlando airport, and more free buses, boats, or monorails transport you everywhere on Disney property.

Staying on-site also includes Extra Magic Hours — where a park opens early or late exclusively for Disney guests.

Don’t Book Until You Get a Deal

Disney frequently runs specials offering discounts on play, stay, and dine packages, or 30% off selected resorts. (Just check the Disney website. Seriously, just once – then the ads will stalk you around the Internet, reminding you what a doofus you were if you paid full price.)

You generally can’t get deals more than three or four months in advance, so it pays to stay flexible. Discounts may also apply for military personnel and Florida residents, or if you re-book before the end of your current vacation.

Commit to One Park a Day

An adult ‘park hopper’ pass, which lets you visit multiple parks in one day, costs $142.71 with tax, compared to $105.44 for a regular ticket to, say, just the Magic Kingdom. Prices on either kind of ticket drop each day the longer you stay. While the park hoppers offer flexibility, there’s more than enough in each individual park to keep you busy all day.

Alternatively, plan to spend at least one day at your free hotel pool, which will delight the kids. (I’ve heard many a crazed parent yelling at their child to get out of the pool right now to go have fun at the parks.)

Weigh Meal Plans Carefully

Disney’s meal plans can save you money if you’re a lumberjack who eats multiple courses, three meals a day. If not, a la carte is probably the way to go.

Eat breakfast in your hotel room and pack your own snacks, but do plan to splurge on at least a few nice meals, since the food is surprisingly good and the diversity of restaurants is truly a special part of the Disney experience.

Bring Your Own Swag

Forego the ever-present Disney merchandise and instead bring cheaper versions of coveted items from home, such as princess dresses or autograph books for character spotting. You can snag a dress like Elsa’s from the movie ‘Frozen’ for as little as about $12 at Target, while a version only slightly nicer might set you back over $50 in the parks.

Don’t Rule out Special Experiences

Disney parks offer some exclusive, but often expensive, ways to get even closer to the magic, like behind-the-scenes tours or premium areas for fireworks viewing. These can be amazing, so it’s worth researching to see if you can find one on your wish list that fits into your budget.

Some offer discounts, such as the Wild Africa Trek at Animal Kingdom, which is cheaper in the afternoons during hot months. Some are even free with park admission, like Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom or Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure –interactive games that bring to life animated characters hidden throughout the parks.

If You’re a Hardcore Fanatic, Go All In

Consider Disney’s Premier Visa card, which earns rewards dollars to spend on all things Disney. There’s also Disney Vacation Club, a timeshare offering stays at deluxe Disney parks villas and many other destinations, along with perks and discounts. My family never considered a timeshare just on principle, but in retrospect, investing when our kids were little would have saved us a boatload of money over the years.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/disney-on-a-budget-managing-the-magic-for-less/feed/032 Simple (and Free) Ways to Entertain Your Kidshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/32-simple-and-free-ways-to-entertain-your-kids/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/32-simple-and-free-ways-to-entertain-your-kids/#commentsSun, 21 Dec 2014 13:00:28 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=31768&preview_id=31768Winter break is upon us, so you know what that means: last-minute holiday shopping, travel preparations, and children bouncing off the walls awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. If you’ve already made arrangements for your little ones, kudos to you. The rest of us have to figure out ways to get a gang of tasks done in a ...

Winter break is upon us, so you know what that means: last-minute holiday shopping, travel preparations, and children bouncing off the walls awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus.

If you’ve already made arrangements for your little ones, kudos to you. The rest of us have to figure out ways to get a gang of tasks done in a limited amount of time, and keeping children entertained and out of the way is not always an easy feat. And if you’re crunched for cash or too busy to think outside the box, your options may seem limited.

But don’t fret. Here are some activities I’ve used over the years to keep my two kids busy, whether it be for the holidays, spring break, or over summer vacation:

1. Plant Flowers

This idea was inspired by a Jack and the Beanstalk project my youngest son completed in preschool recently. Each of the children planted their own beanstalk seed in a cup and tracked its progress over a few weeks.

My son really seemed to enjoy caring for his plant, so we decided to do the same at home one day when the kids were bored. It required a small investment in a bag of soil, and I allowed the boys to pick what they wanted to grow, but I only spent a few dollars to keep them occupied for an hour. If you have gardening supplies in the garage and use seeds you have on hand — for instance, seeds scooped out from that pumpkin you used for pie — then it won’t cost a thing.

2. Family Game or Movie Night

Our definition of family fun is not heading to the Family Fun Center and spending $40 or more to entertain the boys (and this doesn’t even include food). They’ve asked to go a few times, and I’ve only fulfilled those requests when a friend was having a birthday party or special event. Otherwise, we either select a game from our stash or a movie from Netflix, pop a bag of popcorn, and enjoy each other’s company without spending a dime.

3. Write Books

My husband is a children’s book author, so it’s not uncommon to find manuscripts with colorful images around our home. Recently, my oldest son decided he wanted to write a book like Dad, so I encouraged him and it turned out great. (We hope to publish it soon.) Now, we all sit down and write cute children’s books at least once per week, and even the youngest, who can’t read yet, joins the fun with colorful pictures.

4. Neighborhood Bike Ride

Burn off a few of those holiday calories and inhale some fresh air while riding around the neighborhood on bicycles with your children. It’s also a great way to help the kids burn off some of their excess energy and get fit.

5. Arrange a Play Date

Each time I bring my oldest son on grocery trips, we always seem to run into a friend with just as much energy and a mother desperate to find ways to burn it off. It’s a match made in heaven, and we usually arrange a time to meet up at the community park and have a play date.

6. Arts and Crafts

I don’t know one child who doesn’t enjoy letting their creative juices flow through an arts and crafts session. We keep a box of our children’s favorite materials — including construction paper, markers, crayons, colored pencils, glue sticks, and scissors — handy when we’re in a crunch and need to occupy their time for a few minutes. On most occasions, they’re hooked for hours, and we usually join the fun.

7. Picnic

Skip the golden arches and any of the other fast-food spots and whip out the picnic basket instead. Load it up with a few sandwiches, drinks, and healthy snacks and head to the park for a family picnic. You’ll have a meal and play area in one, and save money otherwise spent watching your kids scarf down an unhealthy meal.

8. Hide and Go Seek

This may require you to put on your running shoes and head outdoors in the blazing heat or frigid air, but your kids will have a blast. And if your home is large enough and you don’t mind little ones running around, you may be able to play inside.

9. Live Entertainment

When was the last time you checked the local paper’s entertainment section for free events? If it’s been awhile, get in the habit of staying abreast of all the kid-friendly activities in your area.

10. Paint Pictures

In our home, we’ve created a “gallery” in the hallway near the children’s bedroom. It’s decorated with artistic masterpieces made at school and during our frequent arts and crafts sessions.

11. Math Competition

It’s always fun to throw an activity into the mix that reinforces what your children have been learning in school. My oldest son loves multiplication, so we often have “friendly” math competitions that incorporate tough problems. The first person to complete the problem wins a treat; I usually slow things down for the sake of my son’s feelings.

12. Hiking

Are you near a trail or some other cool element of nature? If so, strap up your hiking shoes and pay these venues a visit. Also, there are a host of national parks to choose from, and those with a nominal fee offer free admission days throughout the year.

13. Bake a Cake (or Cookies)

The point of this activity is not to hype your kids up with sugar-based treats, but rather to help them learn patience, how to follow instructions, and develop skills in the kitchen. Let them experiment with cookie cutters, multicolored cake mix, frosting, and sprinkles, among other things.

14. Create a Racetrack

If you have small boys in your home, they probably enjoy Tonka trucks and Matchbox cars. Instead of buying an expensive track for them, stick colored duct tape to the carpet to accomplish the same objective.

15. Indoor Camping

I’m a bit freaked out by the thought of sleeping outdoors. But that doesn’t stop us from going camping. We just set up the tent indoors and roast the s’mores in the microwave. Mission accomplished.

16. Build a Fort

Don’t have a tent? Even better. Gather up pillows, blankets, sheets, and chairs from around the house and help your kids design and build a fort. The process is half the fun, but they’ll enjoy hanging out in their new hideout afterward, too.

17. Day at the Beach

If you don’t live near the beach, you may not have this luxury — and certainly not until summer for most of us. But if you do, head out in the morning (weather permitting) with lunches in tow, find free parking, and let your children have a fun-filled day in the sun riding the waves.

18. Bubbles

Sounds boring, but toddlers get a kick out of chasing the clear suds. The local dollar store also sells accessories that will allow them to blow bubbles in neat shapes.

19. Write Letters

Are there relatives, near and far, your children would like to connect with? Introduce them to the idea of writing a letter in lieu of a quick text message or phone call. It’s a lot more personable and helps them hone their writing skills, and they may be rewarded with a letter of their own in the mail later on — not all that exciting to your or me, but quite a novelty to them.

20. Sporting Events

Do you live in an area with a college or semi-professional teams? If so, check out their website to search for family fun nights. In most instances, admission is free and treats are offered at a steeply discounted rate. We live near a major university, and a number of the teams offer free admission to children 12 and under.

21. Paper-Chain People

I got this idea from the movie “Daddy Day Care.” If you have piles of paper, teach your children how to cut out figures of people and tape them together to create a chain. If you really want to get creative, allow them to decorate each figure.

22. Paper Airplane Contest

Teach your kids the basics of making a paper airplane, and then allow them to experiment and make their own improvements on the design. Give each child a few sheets of paper and other craft materials, and hold contests in several categories, such as longest flight, craziest tricks, and coolest-looking plane.

23. Volunteer

The significance of giving back to those in need is a lesson all children need to be taught at an early age. That’s why taking them along with you to serve others is a priceless experience.

I recently took our boys to a Santa parade, where we handed out books to less-fortunate children. I think the experience was eye-opening to my oldest son when he realized some parents didn’t have the resources to purchase books for their children.

24. Cleaning Competition

This is another favorite on my list because it definitely lightens the load when we engage in deep cleaning. The objective of the competition is to clean your designated area, whether it be the bedroom, bathroom, or office, as thoroughly as possible in a set amount of time to be eligible for a prize.

25. Chalk It Up

Grab a bucket of chalk and hand it over so they can draw pictures on the sidewalk or the driveway. To start over, simply spray them with a water hose or let the rain wash it all away.

26. Fly a Kite

Don’t have kites lying around? You can pick one up cheap at Target, or make one yourself from items in your home using these detailed instructions.

27. Community Park

For most children, being outside in a massive play area beats staying inside and playing with the same toys for hours.

28. Puzzles

These can be tedious and time-consuming, but if you’re up for the challenge, they’re a great way to stimulate your child’s mind and keep them occupied for hours on end.

You can also have your kids make their own puzzles by taking a thin piece of cardboard, drawing and coloring a picture on it, and cutting it into curvy pieces. Have each child try to solve another’s puzzle.

29. Library

The selection of books is endless, so your kids can’t complain about being bored because there’s not enough to choose from. And they can even rent a few DVDs to take home, too.

Also check your library for kid’s programming, especially over school breaks, ranging from story hours and puppet shows for young children to live music and movie showings for older kids.

30. Scavenger Hunt

Come up with some sort of theme and hide items around the home. Also, incorporate missions into the mix to make things more exciting.

We’re definitely football and basketball fans, so our most recent scavenger hunt was sports-themed. The boys were to locate specific memorabilia throughout the house and even complete a mini-football obstacle course in the garage.

31. Visit the Pet Store or Animal Shelter

Explore a host of household pets by browsing at the local pet shop or animal shelter. If there’s a petting area, your children should be captivated by the company of a furry friend for quite some time.

32. Dance-Off

Our boys love to dance, so when their energy levels are flying through the roof, we head to YouTube, crank up a playlist of their favorite tunes, and get to dancing. The dance-offs are tiring, but a load of fun and a unique way to get the entire family involved.

Before you go into panic mode because the kids are running up and down the halls destroying everything in sight, breathe. Parenting is tough, to say the least, but incorporating just a few of these activities into your daily regimen will channel that excess energy in a positive direction.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/32-simple-and-free-ways-to-entertain-your-kids/feed/0The Ultimate Guide to Cutting the Cable Cordhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-cutting-the-cable-cord/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-cutting-the-cable-cord/#commentsThu, 18 Dec 2014 14:00:39 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=32209Cable television is expensive, not just in terms of money but also in terms of time. The service costs money, as does the electricity that powers your cable box and television, plus there’s the time spent watching television. It’s an expense that can drain both your finances and your opportunities. For us, cable television is ...

]]>Cable television is expensive, not just in terms of money but also in terms of time. The service costs money, as does the electricity that powers your cable box and television, plus there’s the time spent watching television. It’s an expense that can drain both your finances and your opportunities.

For us, cable television is one of the bigger bones of financial contention in our marriage. I’m an advocate for completely cutting the cord, while Sarah is in favor of keeping the service. Of course, Sarah uses it more than I do as she often watches it while taking care of professional busywork in the evenings.

If I were single, I’d drop cable in a heartbeat. Here, in detail, are the reasons why, along with details on how exactly to cut that cable if you’re convinced by those reasons.

The Direct Savings

This is the most obvious reason. Our monthly cable bill adds up to about $70 a month (on average). Over the course of a year, that’s $840. Money Magazine estimates that the average bill will be $123 a month next year, which adds up to about $1,470 a year. Cutting out the cable bill puts that money back into your pocket.

In addition, if you assume that you’re no longer using your television or your cable box for the average amount of time that Americans do (five hours a day), you’re saving somewhere between $5 and $20 a month in energy costs as well (depending on your cable box and television type).

There are a ton of uses for that money. We could bolster retirement savings. We could spend it on other hobbies or interests. We could add it to our savings for our next home in the country. We could simply go out to eat a couple times each month or do something else similarly fun.

But that’s not all…

The Indirect Benefits

There are several indirect benefits to cutting the cable, most of which boil down to two broad categories.

First, you’re going to have more free time. The average American watches five hours of television per day. Cutting the cable will almost assuredly reduce that time. Even if it only frees up an hour or two a day for you, that additional time is going to have a real positive impact in your life if you use the time smartly. We talked about opportunity cost earlier this week – television viewing has a serious opportunity cost involved, and by cutting it, you’re now available for other opportunities.

Second, your exposure to advertisements and product placement and “advertorials” are drastically reduced. If you’re not watching much television, you’re watching many fewer advertisements. You’re watching fewer programs that have all kinds of “desirable” items all over the place. You’re also watching fewer “news” programs that are barely-disguised ads lauding new products. In short, your exposure to messages encouraging you to buy is going to drop through the floor.

Those two categories of indirect benefits add up to a significant positive impact on one’s life.

Eight Entertainment Alternatives to Cable

The first question people ask when the idea of eliminating their cable bill comes up is “what can replace it?” There are actually a lot of options out there for watching and listening to various kinds of programming. Here are eight options.

Alternative #1: Over-the-Air Television

In most areas, you can get as many as twenty different over-the-air television channels for free, provided you have an antenna like this one. We can pick up all of the stations in the Des Moines area with no problem and this adds up to somewhere around 20 channels (about 15 on most days, with a few others occasionally). They come in crystal clear, far better than the fuzzy signal that would come in when I was a kid with our old roof antenna. Plus, once you buy the digital antenna, it’s all free.

Alternative #2: Netflix

For nine bucks a month, you can get more streaming video than you could ever possibly watch. For example, our instant queue is maxed out at 250 items of things we’d like to eventually watch. Some of those items are full television series with many seasons of episodes, adding up to many, many hours of viewing from just that one item. There’s far more showing on Netflix at any given moment than is available from your cable provider and it’s far cheaper, too. If you want to watch it on your television, you can get something like a Roku box which directly replaces your cable box and makes Netflix available right on your television.

Alternative #3: Podcasts

My biggest “replacement” for television, quite honestly, is podcasts. Podcasts are basically internet radio programs that you can download by the episode and listen to on your computer or other listening device. I usually listen to them on my laptop while doing something else or through a wireless speaker in our kitchen. iTunes is a great tool for finding and downloading and listening to podcasts; some of my favorite podcasts include Serial, Radiolab, Love+Radio, Welcome to Night Vale, Planet Money, The Pen Addict, and The Dice Tower. All of these are free.

Alternative #4: Hulu

Hulu is another streaming video option that focuses more on current shows, which includes the five most current episodes of a number of programs for free. You have to watch these from their website, but if you upgrade to their Hulu Plus service (for $9.95 a month), you gain access to previous seasons of many different series along with the ability to watch them on your device of choice (like the previously-mentioned Roku box).

Alternative #5: Network Websites

Similarly, if you visit the websites of most television networks, you can watch the most recent episode or two of many recent shows right on their website. Again, you’ll have to watch these at your computer, but there are ways to stream them to your television (using devices like a Google Chromecast). I have streamed videos from our desktop computer to our Chromecast and it’s worked really wel.

Alternative #6: Youtube

Aside from podcasts, Youtube is perhaps my favorite option for entertainment. There are many highly entertaining channels on there that vary in quality from “guy sitting at his computer ranting” to Hollywood-level quality productions. Just like cable, Youtube is organized into “channels” where you can watch huge collections of videos from different producers – some of my favorite channels include Crash Course, Google Talks, TED Talks, Intelligence Squared, and The Dice Tower. As with the other streaming options here, you can watch on your television using a Roku box.

Alternative #7: NPR

A very simple solution for lasting information and entertainment comes from the humble radio. There are countless stations available over the air in your area. I highly recommend giving your local NPR station(s) a shot, as NPR (and its affiliates) provide a wide variety of informative and entertaining material. In a given day, I’ll learn something new, find out what’s going on locally and nationally and internationally, hear some good music, and usually get a laugh or two out of it as well.

Alternative #8: Amazon Instant Video

If you already use Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Video is a great streaming option comparable to Netflix that’s free to you. The service offers seemingly infinite numbers of television series and movies – if you can’t find something to watch, you’re not trying. As with the other streaming services, you can get this on your TV with a simple Roku box.

Other Alternatives

For me, much of the value of cutting the cable is to free up time to do things besides sitting around and listening to or watching programming. Here are some options to stir your creative juices and reclaim some of that “opportunity cost” lost to television.

Launch a new hobby There are countless hobbies out there for you to try. It can be something as simple as going for walks in your neighborhood, or it could be something much more challenging, like learning to play the guitar. The possibilities here are literally endless.

Start a side business Maybe you could use this found time to launch a side business of some kind. Use that time to write a book or record some YouTube videos or teach an online class or start a blog or start a computer repair business.

Build a skill You could devote your time to taking some classes and working toward a degree or a certification. You could also try simply building a skill that’s useful in your current career or a transferable skill that could be used in another career path.

But What If…

Whenever the idea of eliminating one’s cable bill comes up, there are always questions. Here are some of the most common ones.

What If I Want to Watch Live Sports?

This is the single biggest problem when it comes to cutting the cord. If you do this, you do drastically reduce your ability to watch live sports. You do get to watch a healthy number of events via over-the-air broadcast channels, but it’s not nearly complete.

Having said that, many sports leagues do offer robust online streaming options. For example, mlb.tv offers Major League Baseball games in HD for the entire season (for a fee, of course). If you like pro wrestling, there’s the WWE Network and for mixed martial arts fans, there’s UFC TV. The NFL offers an audio package that includes all games. There’s also the NBA League Pass and NHL GameCenter Live.

If I were passionate about one single sport, I would look strongly at a service like this. If you do the math on the costs, it’s cheaper than having a cable service. The only time cable wins out is if you’re obsessed with a lot of sports.

(Hey, what am I kidding… I am passionate about one single sport, baseball. I usually end up getting the MLB audio package each season because I listen to a lot of games.)

What If I Have This One Program That I Must Watch?

First, see if that program is available via other means. What network is it on? Find that network’s website and see if they make videos available online. Is it available on Hulu?

If none of those options bear fruit, you can look at “next day” options for buying episodes through things like the iTunes store. It’s far cheaper to pay, say, $2 or $3 per episode to keep up with your favorite show than paying $40 or more a month for a cable subscription.

Naturally, this doesn’t work if you insist on following a lot of shows. It may actually be that keeping cable is less expensive for you.

What If I Have a Slow Internet Connection?

Most of the streaming video really requires an internet connection that’s at least 5 Mbps. It does work at a lower speed, but you usually end up having to wait a long time for buffering. You can use this speed test to test your own connection.

If you’re not willing to pay for a home internet connection with that speed, you do eliminate many of the options for replacing television. You can still get over-the-air radio and television signals, of course, plus you can still listen to podcasts (as they can download overnight).

What If I Am Just Not Tech-Savvy?

If you’re able to visit this website, buy an item from Amazon, and plug in a wire or two behind your television, you can handle all of the “tech” needed to get any and all of these services up and running.

A Roku box is about as simple to use as can be. You simply plug it in to the back of your television and it works much like a cable box, featuring a “Netflix” channel, a “Youtube” channel, and many more. Choose the “channel” you want and within there you can select any of the programs within that option. So, if you’re in the “Youtube” channel, you can watch Youtube videos to your heart’s content. I found it easiest to just log into an account on Youtube, subscribe to a bunch of interesting channels on my computer, and then browse and watch those channels on my television.

An over-the-air antenna is even easier. Just plug it in to the back of your television and hang the other end on the wall somewhere. That’s really all you have to do – your television will figure out the rest.

What If Television Is My Main Hobby?

If watching television is your primary hobby, then don’t cut the cord. Enjoy your hobby. If it brings you personal pleasure, then it’s something you should keep.

However, it’s important to recognize what exactly television is – it’s a hobby. It’s a non-essential entertainment expense. If you’re careful about budgeting, this falls clearly under the category of “want,” not “need.” If you use proportional budgeting – meaning you split your money between broad categories like needs, wants, and savings, this falls very strongly into the “want” category, not the “need” category.

Don’t ignore it as an expense. You are spending (on average) $100 a month on your own entertainment, so you should never fall into the trap of believing that you never buy anything fun for yourself. Your monthly cable bill is an example of buying something fun for yourself.

Canceling Your Cable Service

Let’s say you’ve decided that now’s the time to cut out the cable. What exactly do you do next?

The first step I recommend taking if you’re thinking about going down this road is to test it out first. Spend a week or two without using your cable box at all and see if you find the experience worthwhile. Try out some of the alternative methods for entertainment. Seek out new hobbies with the time you previously used watching television. See if you miss it at all. Chances are that if you’re sincere about digging into other interests, you probably won’t miss it too much.

If you find that it’s a good shift for you, check your service agreement. You may find that you’re locked into a contract, as many cable and satellite providers operate on a two year contract basis. If you’re in a contract, figure out what the early termination fee is and whether or not paying that fee would be worth it to escape the contract early. Remember, if your fee is only two or three months of service and you have a year or more left on your contract, it’s far cheaper to pay the fee. If you don’t have a contract, you’re home free.

The next step is to give them a call. Do this if you’re intending to end the service, whether there’s an early termination fee involved or not. Be aware that they’re going to want to retain you as a customer and will likely throw some introductory offers at you to get you to sign a contract.

When they do that, just say no, even if the offers they throw at you really seem like a bargain. If it still involves a significant monthly bill, it’s not a bargain, especially if you’ve shown yourself that you’re quite happy without the service. Just keep saying “no.”

Eventually, they’ll give you instructions for how to terminate the service. They may send a service technician to your home or require you to return the equipment. Follow their instructions to the letter. If you don’t do so, you’re begging for them to add additional fees to your final bill. Make sure that any packages you send are very well packaged, as it’s far less expensive to pack an item well for shipping than to pay for broken equipment.

Then move on with life. You’ll find pretty quickly that the free time you suddenly have without television in your life gives you lots of new opportunities. Enjoy those opportunities. Try new hobbies and new experiences. Dig into new forms of entertainment and leisure. Do something productive, like learning a new skill or taking some classes. Remember always that cutting the cable isn’t just about saving money, but about saving time, too.

Final Thoughts

Trust me, life goes on without a television service. I rarely watch television at all these days. I fill my evenings with other things – taking classes, working on projects, spending time with my kids and with my wife, going to social events, and so on.

Your cable bill is certainly a bill you can do without if you’re willing to make that choice. The decision, as always, is up to you. Are you willing to make a choice that will save you both time and money?

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-cutting-the-cable-cord/feed/013 Perks to Take Advantage of in Collegehttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/13-perks-to-take-advantage-of-in-college/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/13-perks-to-take-advantage-of-in-college/#commentsFri, 05 Dec 2014 18:00:23 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=30721&preview_id=30721Not to alarm you, but college is going to cost you a lot of money. Okay, so it’s no shocker that college and money go hand-in-hand. And you’ve probably already accepted that college is going to cost you a nice chunk of change. Hopefully, you’ve made it a point to search for scholarships, apply for ...

But one thing you should without a doubt be doing during college is taking advantage of all the amazing resources and opportunities that are available to you only while you are in college. These perks vary by college, so you’ll need to do a little bit of digging. Spend some time on your college’s website, attend any orientations if you’re new, and ask around.

Always carry your valid student ID with you, and don’t be afraid to ask, “Do you offer a student discount?” You’d be surprised at how many places don’t necessarily advertise it, but do indeed offer a student discount.

Student discounts are going to be especially prevalent at businesses surrounding your school. Fish around on your college website to see if they offer a complete list of discounts available to you.

Academic Advisors

At least every semester, you should be meeting with your academic advisor. Your advisor is a valuable resource who can end up saving you thousands of dollars.

Planning out your courses may not be as easy as it sounds. If you’ve been in college for a bit, you know that more often than not, there’s a prerequisite that you need to take prior to taking another class. Also, some classes may only be offered during certain semesters. If you’re planning to graduate in the spring semester, but that one class you needed to graduate is only offered in fall, you could be stuck staying back an entire semester for that one class.

Your advisor can help you plan your courses so you’re not taking a class you don’t need, and you’re taking the classes you do need at the right times.

An advisor who’s in your academic department can also help you locate valuable resources such as a tutor if you’re struggling, opportunities to tutor if you’re looking to build your resume, internship opportunities, or other opportunities, such as a teaching assistant position.

An advisor is also a good resource if you’re considering doing an internship and would like college credit for it. Many internships legally require you to earn college credit for your work, especially if it is unpaid.

Career Services

It’s never too early in your college journey to pay a visit to your career services office. Whether you’re looking for a job now or preparing for one down the road, this is a great place to start. Here are some of the services commonly offered at a college career department:

Scoring a part-time job: First of all, they may connect you with part-time jobs available on campus, and they’re your go-to place if you’re able to participate in work-study. Working on campus has a few big benefits: It’s close by so commuting isn’t a problem and, chances are, the schedule will be since they understand that you’re a student. Landing a job is a great way to reduce your student loans while you’re still in school. Plus, you’re gaining experience, time management skills, and building a resume that can help you land an internship or job.

Landing an internship: What does this department offer in terms of internships? They may have an internship job board or be able to put you in contact with various businesses looking for interns.

Internship and job search assistance: Mock interviews, resume writing help, and guidance on your portfolio are just a few of the services that could make your job or internship search less stressful. Most colleges offer internship and job fairs throughout the year to bring your potential employer to you.

Every college is different, so stop by your career services office as soon as you can to see how they can help you.

Financial Aid Counselors

Regularly visiting your financial aid department is a high priority throughout college. Here are some of the things they may be able to help you with:

Finding scholarships: Scholarships are free money that you do not have to pay back. Any amount you receive is that much less you are going to owe in student loans. Your financial aid department may be able to tell you about scholarships offered through the college and also point you in the right direction to find more.

Applying for financial aid: Even if you don’t think you’re going to qualify for aid, filing out the FAFSA and applying for financial aid should be on every student’s to-do list. This can determine if you’ll receive any grants (money you do not have to pay back), are eligible for work-study, and if you’re eligible for federal loans. You’ll want to opt for these federal loans before turning to a private lender since federal loans often offer lower interest rates, and they’re usually eligible for more borrower benefits such as student loan forgiveness, income-based payment plans, and deferments.

Understanding your student loans: If you’re utilizing loans to fund your college education, chances are you have more than one. One key to not racking up a mountain of debt and being able to manage it once you’re in repayment, is understanding your loans. If you have any questions related to your loans, this is the place to visit.

Personal finance guidance: See what other services your financial aid department offers. You might find that there are presentations on various personal finance issues such as budgeting, paying taxes, and learning how to save money.

Free Entertainment

Regardless of where you go to school, chances are there will always be something going on around campus. You have the rest of your life to spend money on pricey events and activities. Now is the time, when you probably have limited funds, to take advantage of free and cheap entertainment.

Study Abroad

Traveling is something you can do at almost any time in your life, but it will never be the same as studying abroad while in college. Studying in another country is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in another culture, create life-long memories and friendships, experience something totally out of your comfort zone, and, as those who study abroad often discover, take the time to figure out where you want to go from here.

Besides the more emotional and personal benefits of studying abroad, the experience can help set you apart on your resume. Studying abroad shows independence, responsibility, and adaptability. You’ll see the world while also knocking off college credits, and if you do it right, you can end up saving money.

Join Clubs

Clubs and other extra-curricular activities are the perfect way to build your resume, network with like-minded people, and meet both professional and social contacts, and explore an area you’re interested in and, hopefully, genuinely enjoy.

Getting active on campus is a productive form of free entertainment. Visit the student life department to see what clubs are available to you.

Your Professors

Take time to get to know teachers who are willing to get to know you. Visit your professor during office hours to ask questions and increase your knowledge. It depends a lot on your professor, but you can also get excellent academic and career advice, and possibly even a letter of recommendation or job connection down the road.

Your Friends

You can’t put a value on friendships you create during college. But besides meeting people you enjoy hanging out with, these relationships could also be beneficial to you in the future. You’d be surprised how the connections you make in classes and around campus could lead to job opportunities down the road.

Ask friends you’re in classes with to connect on LinkedIn. If you’ve worked together at a job or on class projects, they can write you a recommendation.

When you’re in your major classes, take a second to look around. This is a rare opportunity where you’re surrounded by peers that share the same interests, passions, and knowledge. Collaborating with them can be a great experience and a chance to learn new things and let your passion flourish.

The Library

Sure, it’s a good place to study when your roommate is feeling extra talkative, but there is a lot more to that library than you think. If possible, once you know what books are required for your semester, see if they are available at the library. CollegeBoard.org estimates that textbooks can cost you $1,200 per academic year, so think of what you’ll be saving if you could opt for the library textbooks instead of purchasing them.

Your library may also offer various search databases that you’d otherwise have to pay for, not to mention magazine subscriptions. You might also be able to take advantage of events such as visiting authors, writing workshops, and guest speakers.

Computer Lab

Does your college offer a computer lab? If so, this could save you from purchasing a new computer. Even if you can’t do without your own personal computer, it may save you the cost of a printer and ink or specific software that you might only need for one class.

Fitness Center

At the minimum, a gym membership is going to cost you between $200 and $400 per year, depending your gym of course. So if you have one on campus, take advantage of your college’s fitness center.

Use the workout equipment, join intramural sports to make new friends, and attend any classes they might offer. For example, your fitness center could offer classes on CPR training. This not only is beneficial to you in case you’re in an emergency, but if you’re going into any field related to health, child care, or education, this can be a nice gold star on your resume.

If your college doesn’t have a fitness center, ask around to see if local gyms offer a discounted rate for student memberships.

Health Services

Your college very well may have some type of health services department. This can give you access to things like free or discounted health care, birth control, or cheaper prescriptions.

College is a stressful period in your life, so if you find the need to speak to a therapist, you might just find one on campus willing to help you for free or for a much cheaper price.

The health services department may also offer free nutrition counseling, STD screenings, and health talks. Visit your health center to see what they offer students.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/13-perks-to-take-advantage-of-in-college/feed/0How to Curb the Rising Costs of Parentinghttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-curb-the-rising-costs-of-parenting/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-curb-the-rising-costs-of-parenting/#commentsThu, 16 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com?p=28593&preview_id=28593Parenting is the most difficult yet rewarding job I’ve ever had in my life. It definitely hasn’t been easy on my pockets, either. And apparently, I’m not alone in my experiences. According to a recent report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost to raise a child born in 2013 will be $245,300. That’s the ...

Food is a big family expense, but one that can easily be trimmed. Photo: US Army Corps of Engineers Europe

Parenting is the most difficult yet rewarding job I’ve ever had in my life. It definitely hasn’t been easy on my pockets, either. And apparently, I’m not alone in my experiences.

According to a recent report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost to raise a child born in 2013 will be $245,300. That’s the equivalent of a decent home in my area. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the expense categories:

Housing and Transportation: $107,970

Food: $39,060

Clothing and Miscellaneous Expenses: $33,780

Health Care: $20,130

Child Care and Education: $44,400

Obviously, the amount you spend will depend on your area of residence and lifestyle, but there are ways to cut costs across the board.

Housing

Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of ways to slash housing expenses for your children. However, there are two options worth considering:

1. Downsizing or relocating

This is easier said than done, especially if you’re locked into a mortgage on a property where the home value has taken a hit. Unless you can unload the home for the equivalent of what you owe, the costs of downsizing will definitely outweigh the benefits.

On the other hand, renters have more flexibility. Moving into a smaller (and cheaper) home or relocating to a less expensive area could save hundreds of dollars per month. But be sure to consider moving costs, your commute to and from work, and the quality of education at the school your child will be attending. You may discover it’s worth it to just bite the bullet and find other areas of your budget that could use a little trimming.

2. Shared rooms

If you’re running out of room but can’t or don’t want to pay a premium for a bigger home, try having the kids bunk together. You’ll erase the costs associated with an extra room and they’ll have more bonding time. (However, this could be a painful process if they’re older and used to having their own space.) If you have small children, start now. They’ll enjoy each other’s company at nighttime when all the lights go dim and you’re ready to shut down for the day.

A year or so ago, we had to decide whether to relocate or make do with the space we had. Being that we’re both frugal, the latter was definitely the more favorable option. So, I decided to pair up the boys and use the extra room for an office, and it worked out well for our household. The boys look forward to the late-night chats in their room and, most importantly, stay out of my hair in the wee hours of the morning.

Food

This is without a doubt one of the biggest expenses in our home. Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years to slash the grocery bill in half:

1. Shop wisely

As a busy mom, I understand that your time is precious and you may not have hours to spare during the week to hunt down coupons and travel from store to store cashing them in. And honestly, I don’t either. However, that doesn’t mean you have to empty out your wallet on each grocery trip. Instead, pick one or two grocers and stick to them. Once you’ve narrowed down your options:

Set a budget. This amount should be realistic, but not too excessive. Remember, the goal is to save money.

Grab a copy of their weekly circular. You’ll want to spend a few minutes flipping through the pages and circling the items that stand out.

Tada! You have a complete grocery list for the week that’s within your budget.

Once you arrive at the store, don’t give in to the urge to grab additional items that aren’t on the list. If you forgot to add something, check the bottom racks first.

2. Shop on Wednesday evening

Most stores begin their weekly sales on Wednesday, so the shelves are full of sale items. You may luck out and convince the cashier to honor the prior week’s promotions, too.

3. Try generics

But test the products out first before you go overboard and stock up the pantry or deep freezer. We used to spend a fortune on Froot Loops until we switched over to the generic brand. To my surprise, the children actually enjoyed Fruit Spins much more. The cereal was much crunchier, tasted better, and came in $2.00 cheaper than I was used to paying.

4. Avoid pre-portioned items

If you pack your children’s lunch, it’s easy to grab a fruit or veggie cup, throw it in the lunch box, and go on about your day. These items come at a premium to help the manufacturer absorb packaging and distribution costs, so buy fresh and do the slicing and dicing on your own. Plus, you’ll skip all the unhealthy preservatives.

5. Feed the children before you go

Assuming you take them with you on grocery trips, the last thing you need is their appetites going into overdrive while parading up and down the food aisles. Fail to heed my warning and you’ll end up spending way more than you initially bargained for.

6. Leftovers

Why spend countless hours in the kitchen preparing a scrumptious meal for your family only to end up tossing out what remains? Instead, prepare enough to last your family for the next day’s lunch and maybe even dinner. You’ll cut costs and save yourself a little time laboring over the stove the following day.

For your children’s lunch, try heating up the food and placing it in a thermos immediately before they depart in the morning. If lunch is in the first few hours of the day, the meal will still be warm and fit for consumption.

7. Think outside the ‘grocery box’

Have you ever considered purchasing pricier perishables, such as meat, veggies and produce, from an alternative source outside of the nearest grocery store? It’s definitely worth a shot. In fact, I’m addicted to local produce stands and meat markets; it’s a great feeling to know I’m supporting local farmers and fisherman and saving a ton of money while doing so. Plus, my children love bananas, so at 35 cents per pound — versus the 69 cents I’m accustomed to paying at the grocery store — the visits are definitely worthwhile.

8. Handle your food with care

You should treat your food like your most prized possession. Handle it with care. Refrain from leaving leftovers on the stove or countertop overnight, store perishables in air-tight containers, don’t store meats in the fridge for an extended period of time, butter cheese to prevent mold… the list goes on. In other words, use common sense and follow instructions found on the packaging to prevent wasting the food you paid good money for.

9. Follow the golden rules of dining out

So you’ve decided to treat your family to a nice meal out on the town, but you don’t want to spend a fortune. Understood. A few suggestions:

Select water as the main beverage. It’s much cheaper and healthier. I have no desire to spend $2.50 for a cup of apple juice for my toddler when I can get an entire bottle for the same price.

Look for kids-eat-free nights. Every Tuesday, the local Texas Roadhouse has free dining for kids and, of course, I’m on the mailing list just in case I need a reminder.

Clothing

Whether it’s for a special occasion or recital, children will always need clothing. (And babies will need a little extra underneath it all in the form of diapers). In case you didn’t notice during back-to-school shopping, apparel and footwear prices have catapulted through the roof. The days of affordable sneakers and matching short/pant sets at low prices are over. A few tips to cut costs:

1. Save on diapers

I know I spoke against it earlier, but coupons were a lifesaver during the diapering phase. It’s not as time-consuming as you may think if it’s all your searching for.

Another suggestion: Explore your options. If your child’s bottom isn’t sensitive, try switching to a more cost-efficient brand, such as Luvs, to give your wallet a break.

2. Don’t buy unless it’s on clearance

Easier said than done, right? Well, not necessarily. I didn’t grow up in a household surrounded by money trees; my parents worked hard for every dollar they earned, and it was not uncommon for my mother to proudly parade in the store and make a beeline for the clearance rack. So, this is second-nature for me. If it’s not on clearance, I don’t buy it.

3. Buy off-season

Is it snowing outside? If so, it’s a great opportunity to stock up on summer clothing and vice-versa. Don’t wait until the demand is high; buy the items no one else wants and your pockets will thank you. And definitely don’t wait until the last minute to rack up on weather-appropriate clothing or you’ll be among the multitude of other parents who also procrastinated.

4. Thrift shop

If your children are older, they may have a serious problem wearing secondhand clothing. But if they give you a guilt trip, remember that you’re the one coughing up the dough. Be on the lookout for dollar days and irresistible buy-one-get-one-free sales. If you’re lucky, you could easily save 50% or more on designer labels.

Health Care

You never know with children; a few sniffles could turn out to be a nasty virus that lingers for days on end and wreaks havoc on your pockets in the form of medical bills. So you definitely don’t want to skimp on health care coverage. But the costs sometimes outweigh the benefits. Here are a few ways to soften the blow:

1. Ask questions!

When in doubt, ask questions. And never make assumptions; I did and it resulted in a $400 bill for a 20-minute speech evaluation.

2. Urgent care

I recently spent hundreds of dollars on an ER visit that could have only cost me a $50 copay had I given urgent care a shot. Reasoning: They had all the proper equipment on hand and it would have been a package deal. (I called my insurance provider after the fact to confirm.)

3. Generic prescriptions

I’m no physician, so consult with your primary care provider or pharmacist to see what options may be available to you. I’ve saved up to 75% buying generic drugs for my children in the past.

4. Dental schools

Struggling with exorbitant dental bills? Give the local dental school a try. You’ll receive thorough care from a trained and well-supervised student at a fraction of the cost.

5. Other affordable options

Check with your local health department to inquire about options that may be available to you outside of the plans offered at your place of employment.

Child Care and Education

Depending on your area of residence, it may be best to enroll your child in private care, so I’ll let you make the judgment call on that one. But here are a few tips to reduce steep daycare costs:

1. Private care

Going this route saved over $100 per week when my children were infants.

2. Workplace facilities

The price may be comparable to that of standard facilities, but it’s much more convenient.

3. Income-based programs

Check with your local child readiness program to learn more.

4. Ask relatives

Is grandma sitting around waiting for something to do? Here’s the perfect opportunity to occupy her time in a meaningful way.

5. Stay at home

If the cost of care is equivalent to your income, is it really worth sending your child to daycare? Plus, there are a number of perks to being a stay-at-home parent.

6. Share a nanny

But be sure to iron out the details beforehand. You can also use Care.com to narrow down your options.

7. Use your FSA

The IRS allows you to contribute $2,500 (single) or $5,000 (married filing jointly) of your pretax income to a flexible spending account, which can be used to cover eligible child care expenses. By paying with pretax dollars, you’ll in essence be receiving a sizable discount. But if you don’t use the money, you lose it, so plan wisely.

All the other extras

Until there’s more wiggle room in your budget, the extras need to be put on hold. I’m not encouraging you to deprive your children of extracurricular activities, educational tools, or the latest gadgets, but make purchases within reason. If two sports leagues have identical registration fees, but one requires substantially less travel than the other, go with the more cost-efficient option.

By implementing a combination of these tips, even parents should experience some relief in their wallets.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-curb-the-rising-costs-of-parenting/feed/0Some Thoughts on Extreme Cheapskateshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/some-thoughts-on-extreme-cheapskates/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/some-thoughts-on-extreme-cheapskates/#commentsWed, 15 Oct 2014 14:00:08 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=29728Extreme Cheapskates is a “reality” television series that airs on TLC that just entered its third season. Over the last two years, the show has launched a new season in October and, as with the previous two Octobers, I’ve been asked a few questions about my take on the show. First of all, I’m not ...

]]>Extreme Cheapskates is a “reality” television series that airs on TLC that just entered its third season. Over the last two years, the show has launched a new season in October and, as with the previous two Octobers, I’ve been asked a few questions about my take on the show.

First of all, I’m not a regular viewer of “reality” television shows – or of most television shows, for that matter. While I do watch a few series, most evenings, I’m working on personal projects or reading a book. It’s just a personal preference; many of my family and friends are avid television viewers. I just get more personal enjoyment and fulfillment out of reading a book or playing a game with friends than I get out of watching a television program most of the time.

Still, given the encouragement of a few readers, I watched a number of episodes from the first three seasons of Extreme Cheapskates with a notebook and a pen on my lap. As I watched, a few key thoughts came to me.

The Line That Shouldn’t Be Crossed

All of us have certain lines of personal behavior that we feel it is wrong to cross. Many people consider it distasteful to dive in dumpsters for food. Some consider it completely inappropriate to haggle, while others consider it completely fine. Some consider it inappropriate to wear highly worn undergarments, while others are completely okay with wearing them into rags. I could list hundreds of these kinds of “lines” that some people will cross and some people won’t.

This show, rather than focusing on frugality, focuses instead on these “lines.” It’s pretty clear from watching even one episode that they follow the people around and film them in situations where they cross those social “lines” in order to save a buck. They present the “extreme cheapskates” without comment, then rely on our own reactions to those people crossing social “lines” for the entertainment factor.

I saw many behaviors that I object to. In one episode, a mother served some food to their children that I probably would have tossed out, but that’s because I have some strong views on sanitary food practices. I won’t serve my family food that I’m not strongly convinced about.

At the same time, I saw quite a few behaviors that were presented as though they should be “shocking,” but I basically shrugged my shoulders. In one scene, a person bragged about not having purchased new underwear since the late 1990s. I’m not going to see this person’s underwear. That person may have bought very sturdy underwear that lasts for a long time. If I had underwear from 1998 that held up without holes to today, I’d be very happy with that underwear. They had a long lifetime and I got a lot of value out of them. I toss out clothing based on whether it’s worn out, not based on purchase date.

All of these things – and many others – come down to our own personal views on propriety and personal behavior. Rather than just reveling in the shock value, it’s often useful to think about why we’re shocked. Is there really something wrong going on here? Or are we shocked because this person is just doing things in a different way than we have always done things?

The Social Factor

One big issue I saw over and over again was the social factor. It may have simply been the episodes that I watched – and the editing may have been a factor, too – but I couldn’t help but notice that many of the people presented lived fairly solitary lifestyles. They occasionally see family or have friends over, but most of their time is spent at home by themselves or just with the other residents of the home.

On the occasions when social events occurred, it wasn’t hard to notice that the people around them often reacted in a negative fashion toward their behavior. For example, one person invited two friends over for dinner, served them food that had been retrieved from the Dumpster, and then proceeded to brag about this at the dinner table. One of those friends tried to use the bathroom and, instead of finding toilet paper, found a plastic bottle that the friend was expected to use as some kind of manual bidet.

This was the one aspect of the show that made me seriously uncomfortable.

When a friend comes into my home, I think it’s completely reasonable for them to expect that my restroom will provide them what they need to clean themselves to the standards of what they might find in a public restroom, for the most part. I also think it’s reasonable for them to believe that the food I’m serving them is of at least reasonable enough quality that there isn’t a significant chance that they will get ill from the consumption.

Such steps have nothing to do with my own values and how I treat myself. They have to do with respecting others and treating them well.

Serving partially-rotted dumpster items and leaving out no toilet paper and a water bottle “bidet,” in the social standards of America, does not constitute treating your guests with respect. The vast majority of people in that situation would assume that the host was either attempting to harm them or was insulting them in some fashion and the event would cause harm to the relationship.

I know that if I were a guest at someone’s home and I was treated in that fashion, I would probably make a similar assumption unless I knew that person extremely well and was aware of other reasons for such treatment (such as mental illness). Without a caveat like that, I would likely assume the person did not want me around and would minimize the friendship.

I get an incredible amount of value from my social network. I get companionship and camaraderie. I get help when I need it – emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually. I get tons of useful advice.

The least I can do in response to this bounty that my friends give to me is to meet basic social norms when they visit my home. That means having a clean bathroom with toilet paper and soap. That means serving food that’s healthy. That means not having any obvious health hazards present.

It becomes prohibitively difficult to maintain a strong social network if you pursue this kind of extreme… cheapness. Because of that, you’re denying yourself the many valuable elements that come from having a healthy social life.

Why Are You Cheap?

In the end, this show left me asking one question about me and my own frugal choices, as well as the spending choices of the people on the show.

Why?

Why be cheap? What is the reason behind being cheap? What is gained by choosing not to spend money?

When I sit down and think about my overarching goal of financial independence, I can pretty easily put that into perspective compared to the value of having a healthy meal on the table for my kids or for my friends, or having a clean and reasonably sanitary bathroom for them to use when they visit. Those things are more important to me than financial independence.

At the same time, there are a lot of things less important to me than financial independence. Name brands, for instance. Unless I know the name brand will function better in a vital way, I just don’t care.

I know why I’m sometimes cheap. It’s because, compared to the other things in my life, those things that I’m cheap about are less important.

When I see people on this show and how they handle different aspects of their life, it becomes clear that their financial goals are far more important to them than virtually any other aspect of their life. They’re quite happy to significantly raise the risk of illness, alienate friends, and many other things in order to push toward their financial goals.

This show is a window into a different set of priorities and how people live with those priorities.

Final Thoughts

TLC’s formula for shows like this is pretty clear: show unusual behavior without comment and let the crossing of social “norms” provide the entertainment factor. Shows like Hoarders follow the same exact style.

While watching Extreme Cheapskates, I could feel that method at work. I saw people crossing lines that would make me uncomfortable, particularly in social situations. At the same time, I saw people who were obviously deeply committed to ideas and ideals that they held dear. It takes a lot of courage to be different and make choices that are outside of social norms.

My feeling on the show overall is a simple one, and it’s pretty simple to one of the core ideas behind The Simple Dollar.

You should always feel completely free to make challenging choices in your own life, provided that the impact of those choices are mostly limited to yourself. Most of the things I saw fell into that category – people choosing things for themselves that didn’t really affect anyone else in any real fashion. To those people who keep their choices in that category, I say more power to you!

Where I start to get uncomfortable is when those choices do start to affect other people, like when you feed your children substandard food or when you invite guests into your home and do the same. At that point, your personal choices are starting to affect others in a negative way… and that’s where I start to have serious misgivings.

Never forget the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.

In the end, I actually enjoyed Extreme Cheapskates more than I suspected I would, not as a source for frugal tips, but as a window into different value structures and the different priorities people place on things in their lives. It was hard at times to resist the urge to judge, but when I managed to do that, the show was more thoughtful than I expected.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/some-thoughts-on-extreme-cheapskates/feed/020 Great Games to Play with Stuff You Already Havehttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/20-great-games-to-play-with-stuff-you-already-have/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/20-great-games-to-play-with-stuff-you-already-have/#commentsSat, 30 Aug 2014 14:00:13 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=26703Playing games at the kitchen table is a regular part of life at our house. I play games after school three or four days a week with my children, as well as a family game night most weeks. Sarah and I play games together one or two nights a week, and I have a regular ...

]]>Playing games at the kitchen table is a regular part of life at our house. I play games after school three or four days a week with my children, as well as a family game night most weeks. Sarah and I play games together one or two nights a week, and I have a regular game night with a few friends. Sarah and I also host a potluck dinner about once a month where we invite friends over to play games.

While many of the games we play are ones that have been purchased or received as gifts over the last fifteen years or so, some of them are actually games that we play using a few items we would have around the house anyway.

The heart of a game is the people you play it with. If you have a group of people that are all on board for whatever you’re doing, you don’t need a nice game board or production-quality materials. You just need a fun game idea.

Here are twenty games we’ve played in the last few years using items from around the house. If you have the items I list in the first section – and most houses already have most of them – you’re ready to play any of these games. Some of them will be quite familiar, while others not so much.

Items I’m Assuming You Have

Pens, pencils, index cards, and paper These are basic office supplies that most people tend to have in an office supply drawer somewhere in their home. Index cards are probably the least likely ones to have on hand, but you can buy them by the hundreds for far less than a penny apiece if you shop around.

Coins Almost everyone has a change jar somewhere loaded with coins. Coins can work really well as a game component for many different games.

The contents of a chess set Most households have a chess set floating around somewhere. While chess itself is a great game, the board and the pieces can provide the foundation of several more interesting games (I’ll list two of them below).

A deck or two of ordinary playing cards Again, this is an item most families have in a drawer somewhere. A deck of playing cards opens the door to a lot of different games, many of which I deeply enjoy.

Assorted dice When I was growing up, my parents always had a handful of dice floating around in a drawer somewhere, as did my grandmother and great-grandmother. Lo and behold, so do we. I always save the dice out of old copies of Monopoly or Risk. In fact, I have purchased beat-up copies of Risk from yard sales for a quarter just to get that handful of dice. This is probably the most esoteric item listed here, but not having it only locks you out of a couple of the games listed below.

Ten Games You’ve Probably Heard Of

Here are ten popular games you may already know. These games are generally older ones and have been passed around quite a lot over the last hundred years or so. Chances are that you either already know how to play these games or are at least familiar with them.

1,000 Blank White Cards

While I’m not sure how well known this game is, I have seen it in Hoyle game rules books and I’ve found other groups that play it, so I’ll assume you’ve probably heard of it.

1,000 Blank White Cards just involves about 150 blank index cards and pens. There are no rules – you make them up as the game grows. Prior to the first game, the players should collectively make up card game rules and write them on cards, along with illustrations, on about half the cards, leaving the rest blank. For example, you could make a card that says “First player to 100 points wins,” then make a card that says “I gain 100 points” (though that might be a bad idea). You can get really creative here – there might be cards that say things like “Tear up and throw away any card that says the word ‘win’ or ‘wins’ on it.”

At the start of a game, players each draw a hand of five cards. On a normal turn, a player draws a card and then plays one, doing whatever it says. When it’s not your turn, it’s considered appropriate to take a blank card from your hand and start writing on it and adding an illustration. You keep playing until someone wins based on whatever rules you come up with; that player earns two points. If a rules conflict comes up, players just vote on how it resolves.

After the game, players reset the deck by getting the balance back to 75 blank cards and 75 player-made cards by eliminating un-fun or uninteresting player cards. We award one point to any person that gets a new card added to the 75 that we save, meaning that a creative player can lose the actual card play but still win the game through creativity.

Bridge

Bridge is a trick-taking game for four players, as are a few of the other games on this list. Of the card games listed here, I find it to be the biggest brain-burner, as each hand – and even each play – requires quite a bit of thought.

Bridge has a lot of players, who often meet up to play the game at bridge clubs. However, it works quite well as a card game that’s played around the dinner table.

I play a variation of bridge called 500 on a very regular basis with my wife’s family, but if all else were equal, I’d vote for bridge instead.

Charades

Charades is a game I enjoy quite a bit with friends after having a few beers. It works best when everyone’s a bit uninhibited.

At the start of the game, split everyone into two teams. Each team gets twenty or so slips of paper and needs to write down a clue for the other team to act out on slips of paper, which are then folded up and tossed into a hat for the other team. Once that’s done, the teams alternate. On one team’s turn, one person from that team draws a clue, then has a certain amount of time (a minute is usually good) to act out that clue without speaking or writing anything down. If their team guesses it right, they get a point. Generally, teams play through all of the clues.

In order to keep the game fair (and to keep people from writing impossible clues), we add a penalty rule where if someone thinks a clue was truly impossible to execute or guess, everyone votes on it. If a majority thinks a clue was unfair, the team who wrote the clue loses a point. This keeps people from writing impossible ones.

Chess

If you have a chess set, why not play chess?

Chess is a classic board game for two players that can really challenge your abstract gaming skills. It has a long and storied history and tons of books written about the game, but it’s still a game that two people can sit down and easily play in an hour or so.

Cribbage

Cribbage is a great card game for two (or more) players. In this game, players try to score points by playing their cards in the right sequence while alternating with the other player. For example, if you follow another player to bring the total of all played cards to fifteen, you score a point. If you bring the total to thirty one, you score two points.

The game flows extremely quickly, with hands rotating fast and points being scored so quickly that paper can be really inefficient for scoring, which is why there are often cribbage boards for keeping score. This is a game that my eight year old fell in absolute love with for a month or so.

Dots and Boxes

Many people are familiar with this simple game. All you need are two (or more) players, a sheet of blank paper, and a pen. On that piece of paper, you just make a grid of dots – the dots should be arranged in a way so that you can connect them with straight lines to form little squares. Players take turns connecting two adjacent dots. When that player is able to form a square, they write their first initial in the square and then take another turn. The person with the most filled squares is the winner.

I find this game to be fun by making grids with strange shapes, which can turn the game into an interesting logical challenge. We’ve made thin rectangles. We’ve made grids that have an empty middle. We’ve also made huge grids, including one that took several days to finish.

Gin

Of the “ten games familiar to you,” I’ve probably played this game more than any other as it was a bit of a fad in my dormitory during my sophomore year and I also played it a great deal during my high school years.

Gin is a set collection card game for two players where you hold all of the sets (runs of cards or sets of the same kind) you’re collecting in your hand until your entire hand forms sets (or your hand is complete garbage, which can actually be good, too).

Hearts

I spent much of my freshman year in college playing “penny-a-point” hearts with a circle of several guys who seemed to constantly have a game going on in the floor lounge in a nearby dormitory. I like to think I made money over the course of those months, but I’m not sure I did. It’s also a card game that many people are familiar with thanks to the Windows implementation of the game.

Anyway, hearts is a brilliant trick-taking game for four players, with each player playing individually. In the game, players are trying to avoid winning any hearts or the dastardly queen of spades in any trick. You don’t want those cards because the goal in hearts is to have the lowest score and those are the only cards worth points.

Liar’s Dice

Liar’s dice is a great quick bluffing game that requires a few opaque cups and five dice for each player. Each player shakes their dice in their cup, dumps them face down under the cup, and then peeks at the dice. After that, players go around the table claiming that they have the best set of dice under their cup. Whenever someone sees what they think of as deception, they can challenge it, at which point everyone reveals their dice. If the challenged person wasn’t lying, they get a single die from the challenger; otherwise, they must give one of their die to the challenger. Players are eliminated when they have no dice, and the game ends either by agreement or by one player having all the dice.

The game moves extremely quickly, with new dice being rolled every minute or two. It’s mostly about bluffing and being able to read bluffs.

Ten Games You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

Now that we’ve touched on ten simple games you’ve likely heard of, here are ten you probably haven’t heard of that are just as fun.

A2A

A2A is a great variation of the classic game Apples to Apples, except with a bit of 1,000 Blank White Cards (see above) mixed in.

You just take a big stack of white cards and give everyone a single card at the start of the round. The clue giver starts by writing CLUE in big letters on his card, while the others write GUESS on theirs, then everyone flips their cards over. The clue giver then writes a clue of some kind on their card. I generally like the clues to take the form of a “fill-in-the-blank” sentence where the blank is a noun. So, for example, you might write “____ is my favorite secret ingredient in potato salad” or “Last election, I voted for ____ for President as a protest vote.”

Everyone else thinks of a humorous response and writes it on their card, then the clue-giver takes all of the guesses, mixes them up, then reveals them all, choosing the one that is the funniest or the most fitting. That player gets the CLUE card, which is worth a point. All cards are saved, but then the game repeats again with blank cards.

Keep playing to some specified point total – say, seven points.

Now, here’s where it gets really fun. Play this game with blank cards a few times, then play it again using the cards you’ve already made. Shuffle up the stacks, then use the already-existing CLUE and GUESS cards. When we do this, we usually tear up and throw away the least-funny GUESS card for each clue in order to “improve” the card set.

After a while, this becomes a bizarre and hilarious homebrew game.

Arimaa

Arimaa is an abstract game that can be played with the components of chess, but the rules are vastly different.

In Arimaa, four spaces on the board are “pits,” which is how you eliminate pieces. All pieces move identically, one space at a time, and you get four moves per turn. A “larger” piece can move an adjacent smaller piece by either pushing or pulling it, and the only way to eliminate pieces is by pushing or pulling them into a pit. You win by getting one of your smallest pieces to the home row of the other player.

Chess960

Chess960 is played exactly like chess, except with one change – the starting pieces (except for pawns) are rearranged randomly, with the two players having a mirror image of each other’s starting positions. That’s where the 960 number comes from – there are 960 possible starting positions. After that, you play normal chess.

Why do I list this as a distinct game? It’s because, compared to regular chess, you constantly feel like you’re on uncertain ground right from the opening move. Pieces are always in weird places.

EPYC

EPYC is a pen-and-paper game for several players that has a lot in common with charades and 1,000 Blank White Cards.

Each player takes a piece of paper, then on the top of the sheet, they write a phrase or a short sentence. Players pass the sheets to the left, then the next player must draw a picture of whatever was described in that short sentence in the top quarter or so of the sheet. Then, that player folds the sentence backward behind the sheet, hiding it but leaving the picture, and passes it on. The next player looks at the picture and then tries to write a sentence guessing what the picture is, folding back the picture when he/she is done and then passing the sheet. We usually stop this when someone writes a fifth sentence on the sheet while looking at the fourth picture.

There isn’t really any scoring here, just hilarity. By the time of the second or third picture, things are completely confused, and virtually every sheet, when completely unfolded, is absolutely hilarious.

Last Word

Last Word is a great word game for two to four players, also designed by the great designer Sid Sackson. You only need a pen and a sheet of paper to play it.

To start, you draw a 9 by 9 square grid on a sheet of paper, then add nine letters at random to the middle nine squares. After that, players take turns adding letters to the grid. When you add a letter, you must add it adjacent (diagonals are fine) to at least two filled squares on the board. Then, for each row, column, and diagonal that contains your new letter, you may create and score one word. You do this by taking letters continuous to the letter you added in that row/diagonal/column and rearranging them to make the longest possible word. You then multiply the lengths of the words you formed – so if you managed to form CAT, HAT, and BOAT off of a column, a row, and a diagonal that you added, you’d score 36 points – 3 x 4 x 3. Play continues until at least one square is filled along each edge of the board.

The beauty of this game is that “easy” letters like E, T, and A are really helpful for you to score words, but then they make it easy for the next player to score even longer words.

Paper Boxing

Paper Boxing is a great little pen-and-paper game invented by the prolific game designer Sid Sackson.

In Paper Boxing, each player secretly makes a grid of 4 squares by 4 squares, writes an S in the one in the upper left, then fills the other squares with the numbers 1 through 15 however he or she wants. The grids are then revealed and the players begin to play. The first player, from the S, moves to any other adjacent square in his or her grid, then the other player does the same. Whoever ends in the highest number won the round. The player who went second the first time goes first the second time, moving from their current square to a new square.

The game is played over fifteen rounds, with the game winner being the person who won the most rounds. If someone can’t move to an adjacent square from their current square, they lose.

This is currently our preferred restaurant game, as we’ll play it on the back of the placemats.

Sprouts

Sprouts is another pen-and-paper game for two or more players. It’s a surprisingly hard game for as simple as it sounds.

At the start of the game, the players put a few dots on a sheet of paper – it’s a good idea to spread them out. We usually start with five or six.

On a player’s turn, that player must connect any two dots with a straight or curved line. However, players cannot cross any line that already exists and a new line cannot start or end on a dot that already has three lines coming out of it. In fact, we usually mark “dead” dots by turning them into a little X, because those dots can no longer be connected. Then, once a new line is added, the player must add a new dot somewhere along that new line, meaning that the new dot already has two lines coming out of it. The player who takes the last move and leaves the other player without any line to complete wins (or loses, if you’re playing reverse sprouts).

This game is shockingly complicated for as simple as it sounds. It’s another great “back of the restaurant mat” game.

Take-Back-Toe

Take-Back-Toe, designed by James Ernest, is the winner of the “Thousand Year Game Design Challenge,” in which games were designed from simple components that might still be played in a thousand years. All you need to play are forty coins and a single six-sided die. Here’s how it plays, quoted from the official rules:

On a 3×4 board, players will take turns moving chips around. The board starts with a stack of 10 chips on each space in the center row. On each turn, you roll a 6-sided die, and then move that number of chips from one space to an adjacent space (adjacency is orthogonal, not diagonal). To win, you must be the first player to have three stacks of the same size in your home row (the row closest to you). You can’t move fewer chips than the number you roll, so it’s theoretically possible that you will be forced to pass. Also, you can’t undo your opponent’s most recent move.

The “3×4 board” isn’t needed – just have twelve clear piles on the table.

This works great if you happen to have a bunch of pocket change nearby, and the game ends up being much more thought-provoking than you might expect.

Werewolf

Werewolf is a game for eight or more players (up to 33 with a single deck of cards, or 64 with two decks). I find it works best with fifteen or so. In the game, one person is the moderator, a small number of people are werewolves, and the rest are villagers. There are many variants on this game, so I’ll just describe the basics.

The moderator starts by counting the number of players, dividing by six, and rounding up. That’s the number of werewolves. So, if there are 13 players, there would be three werewolves and the rest of the players – ten – are villagers. The moderator then grabs a deck of cards and pulls out a number of black faced cards equal to the werewolf count, a single joker, and a number of red-faced cards so that each other player gets a red card. In this thirteen player example, there would be three black cards, a joker, and nine red cards. These are shuffled and one card is given secretly to each player.

During the first “night” phase of the game, the moderator asks everyone to close their eyes (they go to sleep, essentially), then all werewolves open their eyes and look at the moderator and at each other, then they close their eyes, then the person with the joker – the seer, who is a special villager – opens his or her eyes and points to a single other person in the room, to which the moderator shakes their head yes or no to indicate whether that person is a werewolf.

After that, everyone opens their eyes, starting a “day” phase. The players collectively decide one person to banish because they’re suspected of being a werewolf. People can lie and negotiate however they want during this phase, but at the end of it, one person (decided through whatever process they want) is banished from the game. They reveal their card and they sit out for the rest of the game.

There is then another “night” phase where everyone closes their eyes. The werewolves then open their eyes and pick a villager to banish from the game. They then close their eyes and if the seer is still in the game, the seer tries to identify another werewolf by pointing, as before.

“Days” and “nights” alternate until a victory condition is met. If there is ever a time when all werewolves are banished, the villagers win. If thereis an equal number of werewolves and villagers, the werewolves win.

This is a great game for a large group to play. It involves a lot of lying, bluffing, and deduction and plays pretty quickly unless your group gets too large (games with more than 25 or so tend to get fairly long).

Zuniq

Zuniq is a pen-and-paper game that I also discovered through the “Thousand Year Game Design Challenge,” as it was one of the finalists, Marcus Donnantuoni. It’s an interesting take on the “dots and boxes” game described earlier. Here’s how this one plays (as described here):

Zuniq is an abstract game for two players, played in an 8×8 grid of evenly spaced dots. Players take turns joining two horizontally or vertically adjacent dots by a segment. Eventually, closed zones will form. It’s irrelevant which player closes which zone; zones do not belong to any player. There are only two restrictions: one, once closed, zones are out of bounds for the players and they cannot move in its interior anymore; and two, there can never be zones of the same size. Zuniq’s goal is simple: to be the last player able to move. The player who cannot make a move (either because there are none possible or because it would make a zone with repeated size) is the loser. Draws are impossible.

This is another game that seems really simple, but when you play it a bit, you begin to realize how wonderfully “think-y” it really is. We’ve filled up many sheets of paper playing this one.

Final Thoughts

The games listed here cover all kinds of ground, from creative to strategic, from two player to involving a large group, from short to long. None of them require much equipment, however, because the truth of the matter is that you don’t need a lot of stuff to enjoy a lot of games.

Games are fun because they make you think and they allow you to spend time with people whose company you enjoy. All of these games fall right in line with that spirit.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/20-great-games-to-play-with-stuff-you-already-have/feed/0Choosing Income-Positive Hobbies and Projects – And Fifteen Examples to Get You Startedhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/choosing-income-positive-hobbies-and-projects-and-fifteen-examples-to-get-you-started/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/choosing-income-positive-hobbies-and-projects-and-fifteen-examples-to-get-you-started/#commentsSat, 26 Jul 2014 14:00:07 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=24820Like almost everyone in America, I fill my spare time with a number of projects and a handful of hobbies. I have a number of things I’ve consistently enjoyed over the years – reading books comes to mind, as does computer programming – as well as hobbies that I’ve jumped into passionately for a while ...

]]>Like almost everyone in America, I fill my spare time with a number of projects and a handful of hobbies. I have a number of things I’ve consistently enjoyed over the years – reading books comes to mind, as does computer programming – as well as hobbies that I’ve jumped into passionately for a while and then burnt out on – golf comes to mind, as does geocaching.

Income-Positive Versus Income-Negative

The problem is that the vast majority of hobbies and projects out there are “income-negative.” In other words, those hobbies consume money instead of creating it.

Many of my hobbies certainly fall into this category. While I do strive to keep the financial implications low – I try to spend roughly $1 per hour of hobby enjoyment – most of my hobbies are still income-negative.

Of course, on the flip side of that coin are hobbies which are “income-positive.” These are hobbies that you engage in that happen to earn you a bit of money along the way. The goal of such a hobby isn’t to earn money, but if it incidentally happens, it’s a perk. Sometimes, it can be a way to “keep score” within your hobby.

Income-Positive Hobby or Side Business?

It’s often hard to see the line between an income-positive hobby and a side business. For me, the difference is simple.

If you would do this anyway even if you didn’t earn a few bucks from it, it’s an income-positive hobby. For example, my aunt used to walk in the woods for hours hunting for geodes when I was a child. She would do this whether or not she found any geodes or not, simply because she enjoyed walking in the woods and she enjoyed the beautiful rocks she discovered. She put minimal time into salesmanship – she simply hung a “Geodes For Sale” sign out on her property, left the geodes out on a table, and had a box where people could leave what they wanted (she had a “suggested $5 per geode” sign there, too). She’d just put the geodes she found on that table and then checked the cash box every once in a while.

If you wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for the income, then it’s a side business. I know many bloggers who keep blogging because they really like having that income stream. Their initial passion for blogging has withered, but they keep doing it because they see the five to ten hours per week that they invest as a simple way to maintain that income stream. They’d rather be doing something else, all things equal, but that income stream – even if it’s less than minimum wage for their time investment – keeps them going.

Another example of a side business that is no longer an income-positive hobby comes from a friend who makes wooden outdoor furniture. He loves to tinker in his wood shop and he made some nice deck furniture for himself. Some people wanted to buy them, so he started making and selling them… but he’d rather be making other things in his shop than these repetitive deck chairs.

What Do You Need?

There are four key ingredients to an income-positive hobby.

First, you have to enjoy doing whatever it is that you’re doing, so much that you’d do it anyway regardless of any income stream. An income-positive hobby is about the hobby, not about the income-positive. The second the focus switches, you’re running a small business, not a hobby, and the rules and methods for that change drastically. The income generation is something you spend only a fraction of your time on, mostly just as a method of unloading or sharing stuff you’re accumulating.

Second, you have to have some way of generating income from what you do. You have to be producing something that people will pay you for. Of course, that can be any number of things, but people aren’t going to give you money unless they get something of value in return.

Third, you need a method of reaching people who will actually pay you money. How exactly are you going to share these items of value with people who will give you money for them? How will they find out about them? You need some sort of platform or way of advertising what you have to offer, even if it’s just by word of mouth. The internet offers a multitude of options here.

Finally, you can’t sink much money into it. In other words, if you woke up tomorrow and decided you didn’t want to do it any more, you’re not stuck with a large sunk cost or a bunch of inventory you can’t get rid of without taking a big loss on the chin. For example, it’s going to take a long time to turn woodworking into an income-positive hobby. You might recoup some losses, but you’re only turning it income-positive if it’s pretty much a side business.

Fifteen Examples of Income-Positive Hobbies

Here are fifteen examples of income-positive hobbies, along with looks at how these four ingredients exist in each one.

Writing a Book

Pick a topic and/or a plot, then write it all out. Edit it, polish it, then sell it.

Enjoyment Some people have turned writing e-books into a business, but it becomes a factory-like setting where they crank out content as fast as they can that meets a targeted audience. For this to be a hobby, you should focus on writing what you care about. If you find yourself deeply enjoying the process of writing and fill your spare time with it, this is a hobby to dig into.

Income generation You can sell your books in electronic form online through Amazon’s Kindle store or Barnes and Noble’s Nook store, for starters. There are also easy online options for self-publishing your book in paper form and selling it on those websites.

Customer connection If you’re passionate about books, you probably already participate on book lover’s forums. Mention your book there. Also, spend some time making sure the description of your book is exciting and interesting on the online stores, so people searching for things like your book discover your book.

Money sink If you already have a computer, there’s no real money sink at all with this one.

Hunting for Geodes

Walk around in the woods looking for geodes, other interesting rocks, arrowheads, and so forth. Take them home, clean them up a bit, and sell them.

Enjoyment It’s all about the enjoyment of walking in the woods and finding the geodes. If you enjoy that, then selling them is pure icing on the cake.

Income generation As I mentioned above, my aunt used the simple method of putting them on a table in front of her house with a “GEODES FOR SALE” sign along the road and a box to put money in. You can go further than that if you’d like, particularly if you enjoy breaking and polishing the geodes for presentation.

Customer connection You can sell geodes that you’ve cleaned up on sites like Etsy, but heavy ones may be tricky to ship. Another option is to have them in a local gift shop, splitting the proceeds in some fashion with the store’s owner.

Money sink If you’re just finding them in the woods, there’s no sunk cost at all. If you’re opening them and polishing them, you may need polishing material and a hammer, which doesn’t add up to too much cost. You may also want to borrow a pipe cutter for larger geodes, especially ones you might display or sell.

Writing a Blog

Find a topic you like and write about it. Write articles explaining the basics of the topic, your thoughts on current events in the topic, reviews of products related to the topic, and so on.

Enjoyment If you’re passionate about a certain topic and enjoy writing shorter things, a blog can be perfect for you. I’ve found blogs on certain topics (like board gaming) to be a very enjoyable outlet regardless of whether it earns money or not.

Income generation You can put ads on your blog from services like Google Adsense. You can also add affiliate links for products like those from Amazon Associates, where you receive a small percentage of any sales that go through that link. All of this is pretty effortless and doesn’t affect your writing.

Customer connection The best way is to simply tell your friends about it and also share info about your blog on any messageboards or other sites related to your hobby that you participate on. You can also sometimes attract readers by linking to other sites on your topic. If someone else has a great article, link to it!

Money sink A basic blog costs nothing to start. The only money you might ever sink is to buy a “premium” template or hire someone to make a logo for you, but both of those are optional, especially at first.

Coaching a Sport

If you’re passionate about a sport, volunteer to coach. Once you build up some experience, some positions will pay you to coach that sport.

Enjoyment If you like teaching a sport, being physically active, and interacting with kids (and sometimes adults, too), coaching is pretty much a no-brainer for a hobby. It hits all three of those traits quite hard. I’m not particularly athletic, but I’ve coached youth soccer several times (unpaid) and have been approached to run a league or referee (for a small amount of pay).

Income generation This is a hobby where opportunities present themselves if you participate for a while. You might get involved in refereeing or you might move into an assistant position at a higher level where pay is offered. Generally, you need some experience to get these positions, so the best way to get that is by coaching for free starting at your local parks and rec department.

Customer connection As I mentioned above, this is a hobby that might generate income based upon the connections you build while actively coaching. Your continued efforts will be noticed and opportunities do sometimes open up.

Money sink Generally, all supplies are provided when you’re coaching. You may need a few athletic items for yourself, but if you are physically active, you likely already have them. I’ve sometimes purchased treats for young children after the game, but the cost wasn’t much at all and my children usually received treats, too. Plus, it was a prime opportunity to meet other people in the community and build other relationships.

Taking Photographs

Take lots of photographs of memorable things. Touch up your best ones and share them online. Set up a portfolio and sell prints.

Enjoyment Do you like taking photographs? That’s really what this is all about – you just take your top 0.1% (or so) of images and find ways to sell them to others. You’re just selecting the cream of your output and trying to earn a few dollars from it.

Income generation There are a lot of ways to earn some money from a great image. You can sell prints at a site like Etsy. You can also set up a website that’s just a gallery of your stuff, place a few ads on it (along with links to buy prints), and keep a link to this site in your email signature.

Customer connection The best way is to list your photos with distinctive terms on a high-trafficked site like Etsy so that people will find them when they search. Be as descriptive as you can with your photos and make sure that you’re sharing your links wherever it makes sense.

Money sink The initial photography equipment can be quite a money sink. Thankfully, a good quality digital SLR camera that’s well maintained has quite a bit of resale value (and is fairly easy to sell) provided it’s not terribly old and is compatible with a wide variety of lenses. The total equipment is limited and the upkeep cost is basically nonexistent.

Making Handmade Jewelry or Art

Almost anyone with an artistic bent finds themselves spending their spare time creating some form of art or another. The challenge is figuring out what to do with it… but the internet has really leveled that playing field.

Enjoyment Among my friends and family, there are several artists. Virtually all of them do it because they enjoy it. They love the process of creating something with their hands, eyes, mind, and heart. All of them would continue to do it even if they didn’t earn a dime because the process of creation is so deeply enjoyable for them.

Income generationEtsy! That website provides a tremendous outlet for anyone who wishes to sell art, handmade jewelry, and other items. It’s incredibly easy to open a shop there. Just list the items as you create them with descriptive names. You may find that people eventually request pieces from you and it’s up to you whether you want to do that.

Customer connection Again, if you’re selling items online, it never hurts to put links to that shop in your email signature or to share that link on message boards or discussion forums you participate on, particularly those related in some way to the art or jewelry that you make.

Money sink These types of craft-oriented hobbies tend to have some supplies involved which can vary quite a bit. However, it’s not too hard to eventually bring them to a point of being income-positive, because once you’re producing pieces that people actually like and buy, you’re sinking far less into materials than the sticker price of the items.

Growing a Garden

Vegetable gardening is something that many people do to pass the time and raise healthy fruits and vegetables for their family. This can be a very inexpensive source of food, becoming essentially income-positive because of the food bill it replaces. However, sometimes you have a flood of food and you’re able to sell some of the excess.

Enjoyment Do you like to garden? It’s really as simple as that. Some people happily plant and cultivate large gardens each year regardless of what they produce. If that’s in your heart, then gardening is a spectacular income-positive hobby.

Income generation The food you produce replaces part of your food bill, so that’s income in a very direct fashion. If you have excess vegetables, you can simply open up a roadside stand or buy a slot at a farmer’s market. You may even be able to just sell everything you have to someone else running a farmer’s market slot, making it very easy.

Customer connection Unless you’re running a roadside stand, you don’t have to worry about this at all. With a stand, a simple large sign along a busy roadway should be all you need.

Money sink Gardening does require a number of tools and, if you’re not saving seeds, does require some seeds each year. However, even a moderately successful garden repays this with the crops of food after a few years.

Walking Dogs

There’s a person who lives somewhere near us that does loops in our neighborhood each day walking multiple dogs. The process is easy – she has a key to get into people’s garages or kitchens where she picks up their dog, walks that dog for a mile or two (she’s usually walking two or three at a time), takes the dog home, feeds and waters the dog, then locks the door behind her. It’s an easy routine, plus she walks her own dog along the way. She just chooses friendly dogs that get along well with each other, making it fun and easy for her.

Enjoyment If one of the highlights of your day is walking your dog and you live near other dog owners, you can simply add a few more dogs to your walk. You can charge a small fee per walk and then just pick up that dog on your loop, then loop back to return that dog.

Income generation This is something that works best with specific arrangements. Just figure out a per-walk fee, then work it out with the person whose dog you’re walking. Essentially, all you’re doing is stopping by to pick up another dog on your walk. Skip on the difficult dogs.

Customer connection Basically, you’re going to look for people near you that have dogs and who work during the day. You can identify these people when you’re walking your own dog and introduce yourself directly to them.

Money sink There’s essentially no cost here. You stop, pick up another dog, continue on your walk, return that dog, and collect money at the end of the week.

Collecting Coins

This is a great hobby for patient people. Just go to the bank, withdraw some amount of money in coins, then go through them and look for rare coins that have some additional value. Sell those, then cash in the remaining coins. I know a person who has built several full sets of state quarters doing this, selling the full sets for just a bit more than face value plus the cost of the coin books.

Enjoyment Like I said, this kind of hobby appeals to patient people who enjoy numismatic studies (i.e., the collection and study of coins). If that’s your thing, this can be a lot of fun.

Income generation The income comes from being able to sell coins for a value above their face value. Since you’re just sifting through piles of coins that you already own, you only earn money by selling off coins with some sort of premium. However, that premium is pure profit.

Customer connection You have to find people willing to buy your rare coins. For specific rare coins, your best bet is either a local coin dealership or eBay. For coin sets – like state quarters – you can have some success on Craigslist.

Money sink You need the initial capital to buy a bunch of pennies or quarters at once, but that money is liquid, so you can always just cash it right back in if you need to. Thus, there really isn’t a money sink here.

Tutoring a Subject You’re Passionate About

Two different friends of mine are involved in tutoring students on subjects that they enjoy. This is a great way for a part-time teacher who loves teaching individual students who are receptive to the topic. This does ride the fine line between business and income-positive hobby, but if you’re genuinely the type of person who enjoys teaching, this could be for you. To me, this is much like coaching youth sports – if you’d do it for free, this is the right income-positive hobby for you.

Enjoyment Do you like to teach? Do you enjoy one-on-one interaction with receptive students? That’s what tutoring is really all about. You have control over the topics you teach, too, so you’re not stuck teaching something you’re not prepared to teach or don’t enjoy teaching.

Income generation Most of the time, tutoring positions are paid, though rates can vary wildly. It depends entirely on arrangement and personal experience.

Customer connection The best method I’ve heard of is to simply stick a professional-looking flyer and a couple of business cards in the mailboxes of teachers in your school district that might be handling your area of expertise. Make sure to include your specialty, your contact information, and where you do this tutoring – libraries can be a great place.

Money sink You’ll need to print off some flyers and business cards, but that can all be recouped with one successful tutoring gig. In other words, there’s a small money sink, but not a tremendous one.

Fixing Up Cars

Two additional friends of mine are in the hobby of fixing up old cars, transforming complete junkers into attractive, road-worthy cars. They invest all of the labor themselves, then sell the cars directly.

Enjoyment If you love tinkering around with older cars and aren’t afraid to tackle any of the elements of a car on your own, this is perfect for you. It’s a constant opportunity to learn and try new things, too.

Income generation If you can transform a junker into something well-built and attractive, you’re going to turn a profit. You can then use that profit to repay your initial investment and keep moving forward.

Customer connection There are many places to sell rebuilt cars, from eBay Motors to Craigslist or even to car-specific forums. If nothing else, you can stick a sign in the car and park it somewhere.

Money sink This is a huge money sink, of course. You’ll need a lot of tools and a lot of parts and a decent-sized garage to pull all of this off. Here’s the thing, though – almost every person I’ve met that is passionate enough about cars to start buying things ends up with a big pile of tools and usually finds a workspace of some kind. It will take a lot of hours to recoup this cost, but if you love working on cars, the hours will fly by.

Trawling Yard Sales

I know many people who, during the summer, will trawl yard sales and flea markets looking for mis-priced goods that they can sell for a profit. I’ve even done it myself. The trick is to focus on things that you can accurately identify and price at a glance, so it needs to coincide with some interests of your own. (General purpose goods that are mispriced tend to vanish very quickly.)

Enjoyment If you like wandering through yard sales, antique stores, flea markets, and the like, this can be a great hobby. However, you need to have self-restraint, as this hobby works best if you focus on browsing and looking solely for the great bargains that you can quickly resell.

Income generation Income is generated through re-selling some of the large bargains that you discover. This is usually done by identifying things where the price is completely out of place, then re-selling them at an appropriate market where you can earn a higher price – say, eBay or an appropriate collectibles forum.

Customer connection You don’t really need connections to your customers, as a sufficient profile on an online reselling service like eBay should suffice. Since your items are irregular, you don’t need to worry about it too much.

Money sink Since you should be flipping items quickly with this hobby, there’s not much of a money sink other than the initial cost of the items. You shouldn’t be accumulating things with a hobby like this one.

Playing Music

If you enjoy playing music and have even a bit of skill at it, it’s not hard to earn at least a little money from your talents. There are opportunities to play live music at community events, busking (meaning you stand somewhere and play with a basket in front of you), or simply record yourself playing and post it on Youtube. You don’t have to record albums or sign a record contract. You just have to enjoy playing.

Enjoyment Play when it’s fun. There’s no need to sign contracts or lock yourself into a deal of any kind. Just play when it’s enjoyable for you.

Income generation If you’re playing on the street somewhere, leave your guitar case open for donations. If you’re playing at home, record what you’re doing and upload it to Youtube, enabling ads on the video. Also, you might get hired to play at a community event of some kind. The key is to focus on the fun and enjoyment of playing and let a little money trickle in along the way. You can record a homemade CD or two and sell them when you perform as an additional way to make a few bucks.

Customer connection Since you’re just playing for fun, your customers are largely attracted by the music. Your connection to the customers comes in audio form. If you want to maintain that connection, have some business cards that link to your Youtube channel where you’ve uploaded recordings of yourself playing.

Money sink The big money sink is in the instruments, but once they’re owned, the upkeep cost is pretty low. If you print business cards or make CDs, you’ll sink a little money into those.

Playing Computer Games

How can this possibly make money? Streaming, that’s how. Sites like Twitch allow you to broadcast your game play to others, plus you can record clips of your best plays and stick them on other sites like Youtube. These options allow you to embed ads so you can earn a bit of income while you game.

Enjoyment If you like playing computer games – and especially if you like talking to friends out loud while doing it – then this is going to be perfect for you. That’s essentially all you do.

Income generation You earn income from advertisements on your gaming streams and Youtube videos. The more viewers you have, the more you make.

Customer connection To get people to your channel and/or your streams, you need to advertise it a bit. Share the links on gaming forums where you participate. Once they’re there, you’ll have to be at least a little entertaining, so you’ll need to talk while streaming and carry on conversations with your viewers (they’ll often type in a chat room and you can respond out loud).

Money sink You need a healthy internet connection to pull this off. Without that network connection, you can’t make this work. You’ll also need some initial software (that isn’t too expensive) and, naturally, any games you want to play. If you don’t have a video camera, you’ll need one of those, too.

Enjoyment If you like walking in the woods, you’ll probably enjoy hunting for mushrooms. You just need to keep your eyes on the ground.

Income generation As with gardening, they can provide part of (or all of) a meal. They can also be sold and, if you can find a good buyer, they can earn you quite a bit of money. Fresh morels can often be sold for $40 a pound. Posting them to Craigslist will often quickly find you a local buyer. If not, you can dry them and sell them later on (they don’t last particularly long in a fresh state).

Customer connection If you eat them yourself, you don’t need customers. On the other hand, if you sell them, you mostly just need to advertise them in a public place like Craigslist to quickly find a buyer.

Money sink Since it’s free to walk in the woods (assuming, of course, that you have permission), there’s no cost involved. It’s just pure profit, whether you eat them or sell them.

Final Thoughts

An income-positive hobby is a great way to take something you do for personal enjoyment in your spare time and, without much effort, generate a little bit of income from it. It doesn’t remove the joy, because the motivation remains personal pleasure, but you’ll find that you’re no longer just dumping money into enjoying your spare time. Instead, your money is staying in your pocket and perhaps even growing a little bit.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/choosing-income-positive-hobbies-and-projects-and-fifteen-examples-to-get-you-started/feed/0Music for Free – Comparing Nine Free (and Legal) Online Music Optionshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/music-for-free-comparing-nine-free-and-legal-online-music-options/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/music-for-free-comparing-nine-free-and-legal-online-music-options/#commentsThu, 24 Jul 2014 14:00:25 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=24813Right now, there are a ton of legal ways to listen to music online for free. Sure, you can buy mp3s so that you have complete freedom in terms of when and where you want to listen, but if you just want a radio-like service with a bit of control, there are many free options ...

]]>Right now, there are a ton of legal ways to listen to music online for free. Sure, you can buy mp3s so that you have complete freedom in terms of when and where you want to listen, but if you just want a radio-like service with a bit of control, there are many free options online for listening.

Which one is best, though? It really depends on what you’re looking for. Over the past few months, I’ve tried out several services, each with a unique mix of pros and cons. I found all of the services here to have some unique merit, but each person will find one that clicks with them.

Note that the pros and cons of each service are current as of right now. The online music market changes pretty regularly, so these recommendations might not be precisely accurate a year down the road. However, if you’re listening for free, it’s pretty easy to switch services.

In order to highlight each service, I’m going to point to a specific artist, album, or station that I like that you can listen to on that service.

Spotify

How Is It Free?

Ads. That’s the simple answer. Spotify injects ads into your listening experience, making it feel a lot like listening to a normal radio station. In fact, that’s what Spotify feels like to me – a radio station where I can control the playlist to an extent. You can listen as much as you’d like with ads.

Also, you’re restricted to enjoying specific artists, albums, and playlists in “shuffle mode,” which means you can pick the artist or the album (or someone’s playlist), but when you listen, they play the tracks in random order. It does generate interesting playlists based on your listening history, though.

What’s Good About Spotify?

Spotify has an enormous music selection, perhaps the widest selection of any free service. I like to listen to Americana music and the artist selection goes really deep in that genre. The interface is very easy to use and I can usually find exactly what I want pretty quickly.

What’s Bad About Spotify?

If you go for the premium version, it can be expensive. It’s not the easiest one for discovering new music, either – I mostly find new music on Spotify from friends linking to stuff. Also, it’s heavily integrated with Facebook, which is appealing for some, but not so much for others.

Get Spotify If…

Your music tastes run deep into the obscure stuff and you don’t mind a “shuffle” mode when listening to songs by a particular artist or album.

The Avett Brothers on Spotify

The Avett Brothers are one of my favorite musical acts of all time. I don’t even know how to describe them – Wikipedia remarks that “the Avett Brothers combine bluegrass, country, punk, pop melodies, folk, rock and roll, indie rock, honky tonk, and ragtime.” Spotify features nearly their entire discography on there, including my favorite album by them, Mignonette. I often just turn on The Avett Brothers at Spotify and just let it play all afternoon.

Pandora

How Is It Free?

Like Spotify, Pandora’s free version is ad-supported, but you can pay for a premium version without ads. The free version also seems to take “breaks” every once in a while, which seems to be from periods where Pandora’s overall usage is peaking, likely to save Pandora money on their bandwidth costs. The paid “Pandora One” service doesn’t have these breaks (or at least doesn’t have nearly as many).

What’s Good About Pandora?

The music service is curated, meaning that a lot of junk is filtered out, and it does a spectacular job of finding new music for you that matches your tastes. I really like the ability to set up a station based on an artist I like (it’s as simple as just typing in the artist’s name), listening to songs by that artist and ones that Pandora identifies as similar, then giving “thumbs up” to songs I really like and “thumbs down” to ones I don’t.

Over time, you can end up creating a really good music “station” that matches your tastes really well. I would be very sad without a few of my stations that I’ve curated over a long period of time.

What’s Bad About Pandora?

The song catalog isn’t as large as other services. You start to really notice it after a long while because your curated station will start to cycle a fairly small set of songs all the time. It does take a while to reach that point, though.

Get Pandora If…

You like the idea of having random songs that are very well matched to your personal tastes appear for your listening pleasure – and you have the ability to veto ones that don’t match so that your preferences evolve over time.

Old Crow Medicine Show on Pandora

Old Crow Medicine Show plays a wonderful mix of mountain music with modern themes mixed with bluegrass and rock elements. When you listen to Old Crow Medicine Show on Pandora, they’ll share other music on that station, such as bands with more of a country flair like The Steeldrivers, old school stuff like Johnny Cash, and acts with a harder edge like Hank Williams III.

Rdio

How Is It Free?

As usual, this service is made free by ad support (inserting audio ads into your listening experience) and, as usual, there’s a premium version without ads. I found the ads on Rdio to be relatively innocuous compared to some other services. The free mobile app is unusual in that it offers only a certain selection of “free” stations. While most of these services do appear to have limits on free usage (capping you to so many hours of listening for free each month), I seemed to hit Rdio’s pretty quickly. Of course, I actually really enjoyed using the service, so I may have used it more than I realized.

What’s Good About Rdio?

It has my favorite application of all of these services in terms of ease of use and ability to discover new music. While all of the services have a strong selection of well known music and top hits, once you dig down, I’ve found that Rdio tends to have a surprisingly good selection of obscure artists that are either self-published or from independent labels.

What’s Bad About Rdio?

It has a pretty large music selection, but not as large as Spotify. I have only found a couple of instances where a song I wanted to hear was in Spotify but not in Rdio, though. I think Rdio doesn’t include some songs from more obscure musicians on major labels, passing on them to have lots of independent musicians. In the relatively short time I’ve used it, I’ve found a surprising number of really good but rather obscure musicians due to Rdio.

Get Rdio If…

You like discovering an occasional independent music gem mixed in with all of the standard stuff you know you like, so that you’ll be the first to hear of it among your friends.

Muse on Rdio

Muse is a progressive rock band that sometimes uses electronic elements and often has a flair for the bombastic. Rdio offers Muse’s full catalog of recordings and some live shows and has helped me discover similar great bands like British Sea Power and Ours.

Slacker Radio

How Is It Free?

As with everything else, it’s free because of ad support. The ad support here is extensive, though, with both visual ads and audio ads and sometimes DJs talking in such a way that it feels like an ad. It actually reminds me a fair amount of FM radio.

What’s Good About Slacker Radio?

Other than the ads, it has the best overall quality of any of these services. There are more than 200 “stations” to listen to – stations are a lot like normal radio stations, but they’re “curated,” which means that the playlists are much longer and usually better. Plus, you can listen to albums and artists to your heart’s content. The number of available songs is also impressively large, comparable to Spotify and larger than many other services I’ve listed here.

What’s Bad About Slacker Radio?

Ad-mageddon. Slacker Radio has the most ads and the most intrusive ads of any free experience, at least from what I’ve seen and heard. That’s really the only drawback of this service, because in every other regard, I’m a pretty big fan.

Get Slacker Radio If…

You don’t mind ads as a healthy part of an otherwise stellar music listening experience.

Americana on Slacker Radio

The Americana station on Slacker Radio is just amazing. It’s loaded with artists I love like Johnny Cash, Old 97s, and Ryan Adams (and, yes, Old Crow Medicine Show and The Avett Brothers), but it’ll sometimes pop out new things at me like Donna the Buffalo or Randall Bramblett, both artists I’ve discovered thanks to Slacker Radio.

Grooveshark

How Is It Free?

Grooveshark’s business model is completely different than the other services I’ve mentioned here so far. The content there is entirely user-created, which means that they don’t have to load down your audio with tons of ads or restrict how you listen. They make their money from display ads and from referrals from online music sellers (as every song you listen to usually has links to places to buy it so you can permanently add it to your collection). There is a premium account that gets rid of the display ads and allows you to listen on your phone (the mobile app isn’t free).

What’s Good About Grooveshark?

There are lots and lots of independent artists on there (yes, along with major labels with lots of familiar music). In terms of discovering new music, Grooveshark is the place to be. You’ll find tons and tons of new stuff to listen to. There are also some great curated playlists on there and the social features are really amped up, which means you can easily find people who are into the same types of music that you are and discover what they like.

What’s Bad About Grooveshark?

Since everything is uploaded by users, it can be a free-for-all at times. People mislabel songs and often upload music that they don’t have the rights to. Grooveshark pulls those songs off of the service as they’re discovered, so a song you heard yesterday might not even be on there today.

Get Grooveshark If…

You want an ad-free audio experience that’s a music free-for-all with lots of social features.

Matisyahu on Grooveshark

Matisyahu is a reggae artist who discusses themes of Orthodox Judaism in his music, though over time listeners can hear his spiritual growth and changes in spirituality and philosophy through his songs and themes.

The selection of Matisyahu’s music on Grooveshark shows both the greatness and the problems of the service. It includes a ton of his music and many of his albums, but it’s lacking his most well-known album Live at Stubbs (though Shake off the Dust… Arise contains most of the same songs). However, it’s all presented ad-free

Jango

How Is It Free?

Jango is very similar to Pandora in that it’s centered around personally-created online radio stations that are paid for by the inclusion of advertisements in the audio stream (and occasionally visual ads, too). What makes it different is artist promotion – the service tries very hard to promote the artist that you’re listening to (most of the time). (They don’t even offer a premium service.)

What’s Good About Jango?

Their ads seem to primarily focus on promoting new musicians, which is better than telling me about the latest products. The entire service seems to center around the promotion of new musical acts, which is a good thing (for the most part). I’ve found out about a few interesting musicians because of this. Their interface is very bare bones and simplistic, which I like.

What’s Bad About Jango?

While their advertisements are mostly focused on promoting musicians, it’s pretty clear that they do directly promote musicians in the music you “randomly” get. For example, if you see a big flashy ad for a particular artist, there’s a good chance you’re going to hear that artist featured a lot.

Get Jango If…

You want to know more about the artists you’re listening to with a Pandora-like experience.

Vampire Weekend on Jango

Vampire Weekend is a mellow pop/rock band with uptempo music that draws on all sorts of things, sometimes using strings and African polyrhythms. I particularly enjoy the wordplay in their lyrics and the upbeat music.

Vampire Weekend’s page at Jango shows you the good and bad of what Jango offers. It offers you a nice selection of music from Vampire Weekend and branches off into related artists (like Discovery, Fun., and Sleigh Bells), but it also sometimes interjects artists that seem barely related and show you a big ad for them. This seems to happen about once an hour or so.

Songza

How Is It Free?

Songza’s music service seems to be entirely funded by display ads, which means that audio advertisements won’t interrupt your listening experience. I believe they have experimented with audio ads in the past, but I never heard a single one while experimenting with the service. As usual, there’s a premium service that does away with those display ads.

What’s Good About Songza?

What stood out to me about Songza is how they offered music that was curated to match my mood – and their curated picks actually matched really well. They had great selections for writing, for having a cookout, and for pretty much any situation or event you might think of, plus you could break them down by genre, too.

What’s Bad About Songza?

The song selection isn’t particularly deep. It’s hard to compare the size of libraries alone because they don’t tell you the full story (an extra two million obscure songs in genres you don’t listen to do not make much of a difference), but it felt like I heard repeated songs fairly often. It’s also not particularly good at song discovery unless something new to you pops up in a curated playlist.

Get Songza If…

You want music curated to your mood and situation that isn’t interrupted by audio ads.

Soundcloud

How Is It Free?

As with Grooveshark, it’s free because the music is almost entirely user-submitted, meaning that the service can mostly rely on display ads.

What’s Good About Soundcloud?

It’s an amazing repository for remixes – that seems to be their focus. If you enjoy people creating remixes of songs or mashing up multiple songs, you’ll like what you find here. It also has splendid social features, which enable people to share discoveries easily and, best of all, comment on them at specific locations throughout the songs (the big thing I liked about Soundcloud).

What’s Bad About Soundcloud?

It’s often chaotically organized. You basically have to rely on people who have assembled playlists on there to find anything because it can be really difficult to find specific music on there. The major record labels tend to police Soundcloud, too, and request takedowns of anything they feel they have rights to, which means stuff disappears all the time. It’s exciting, but it’s really chaotic.

Get Soundcloud If…

You’re really into song discovery, artist discovery, and remixes in a social environment.

pomDeterrific on Soundcloud

pomDeterrific is a user on Soundcloud that makes these incredible mash-ups of songs old and new, creating surprisingly good songs. You can check out pomDeterrific’s stuff here. I love the artist’s ability to choose songs both old and new and from such disparate genres and somehow make them work together.

I particularly like Call Me a Hole, which is a mash-up of Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole and Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe. I also really enjoy Blurred YMCA, a mash-up of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines and YMCA by The Village People.

Youtube

How Is It Free?

Youtube is entirely supported by advertisements, both display ads and video ads (with audio). You “pay” by seeing (or hearing) those ads.

What’s Good About Youtube?

There’s a jaw-dropping amount of music on there and you can find almost anything on there with a simple search. The recommendation engine – the videos listed off to the side – is actually pretty good at showing you relevant related stuff. You can easily create your own playlists, too.

What’s Bad About Youtube?

Ads. Many videos feature video advertisements on the front end that you can’t skip, which means you’re hearing an ad in between every song or every other song. That can get rather annoying.

There’s also the problem of bandwidth. Since you’re playing videos there, you’re downloading a lot more data than you are with other streaming services.

Get Youtube If…

You just want to curate your own list of old favorites to listen to over and over again with minimal fuss.

Simone Dinnerstein on Youtube

Simone Dinnerstein is a classical pianist who just evokes something within me. I don’t know what it is, but I find her pieces to be deeply soothing and yet somehow also really engaging. Her Youtube channel provides many, many examples of her musical works, mixing both live performances with her recordings in a great mix.

Final Thoughts

There really is no best service. It depends on what you’re looking for.

If I’m looking solely at free options and I’m willing to overlook ads, if I had to choose just one service, I’d probably choose Slacker Radio. It’s the most full-featured in terms of stations, artists, and interface.

If you don’t mind listening to what someone else provides as a playlist and just want something to match your mood, Songza is probably the best option.

On the other hand, the most full-featured premium option is probably Spotify, though Rdio is impressive. Both of those services tempted me to sign up for their full-featured services, because they go above and beyond just removing ads.

I will say this – almost all of these services reward using that service for a while. I’ve found that the longer I stick with one service, the better the customized stations get and the better I get at identifying stations and playlists and users that I will enjoy.

There’s a flood of music just waiting out there for your ears, all legal and all ready for you to enjoy.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/music-for-free-comparing-nine-free-and-legal-online-music-options/feed/0My Timeless Strategy for Buying Electronicshttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/my-timeless-strategy-for-buying-electronics/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/my-timeless-strategy-for-buying-electronics/#commentsWed, 18 Jun 2014 14:00:29 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=24310I write for a living, mostly for websites. It’s not surprising that I have a great deal of use for a number of electronic items. I have a smartphone, a reasonably modern computer, a laptop, and an iPad Mini. Almost since the day I graduated from college, using computers and other electronic devices has been ...

]]>I write for a living, mostly for websites. It’s not surprising that I have a great deal of use for a number of electronic items. I have a smartphone, a reasonably modern computer, a laptop, and an iPad Mini.

Almost since the day I graduated from college, using computers and other electronic devices has been an essential part of my professional life and a useful part of my personal life. I’ve been buying and upgrading electronic items of all kinds for more than a decade.

All of these changes have simply refined my electronic buying strategy, scaling it back but not really changing the core principles. Here’s how I do things.

Why Buying Electronics Is a Struggle

First of all, you simply cannot buy electronic items for life. They are stuffed full of so many tiny components that the odds are that something will eventually break in them. Anything with a large circuit board in it is begging to eventually face some serious problems, simply because there are so many points of potential failure in the device.

Compare a computer motherboard to a toaster. In a toaster, there are only a few things that can really go wrong. With a computer motherboard? Look at all those resistors and capacitors. If even one of them has a tiny flaw that doesn’t make itself apparent at first, it can cause deep problems with the entire device, often damaging other parts, and it’s often impossible to diagnose.

The same thing is true for a hard drive or a microprocessor. There are just too many ways for the item to fail. Because of the failure rate of electronic parts, I don’t buy electronics with a “buy it for life” mindset.

Instead, I use a slightly different approach.

I Buy Task-Focused Electronics

Electronics are often advertised by showing you the many, many different things that they can do. In reality, though, almost all of us end up using our devices for just a few key things.

For me, I use my desktop computer for writing, for web surfing, for a bit of video and image editing, for a bit of programming, for listening to podcasts while I work, and for occasional Skype calls and computer games. That’s it – and that’s far more than, say, my mother uses her computer for. She uses it for emails, a bit of web surfing, and occasional Skype calls. I don’t believe she’s ever used it for anything else.

Sure, both of us could use our devices for other things – but we don’t. Those other tasks are cool and all, but they’re just not part of our daily routines. I don’t need a computer that does high-end video editing and can play the latest video games in 1080p. Why? Because I don’t do those things with any regularity.

The idea of “maybe someday” is a dangerous one when it comes to electronics. There are a lot of tasks I might someday do. Sure, I might someday do high end video editing. Sure, I might someday want a mobile device that I can stream video on from anywhere. However, if those things ever translate into a pressing need, that need will show up quite often in my life and eventually show me that I need to consider new tasks the next time I make an electronics purchase.

For me, buying electronics is purely task-focused. I buy things solely to take care of the tasks I need to accomplish with them and don’t worry about the “maybe somedays.”

Identifying Those Tasks

The really useful frugal skill when it comes to buying electronics is knowing what tasks you actually need to accomplish. What is it that you actually need to do on a daily basis or a multiple-times-a-week basis with this electronics item?

I have a pretty concrete list of what I need to do with my desktop computer, as I listed above. The entire purpose of my laptop is to “write on the road,” which is a professional need on a pretty frequent basis. My iPad Touch was a gift that, while I find it useful, I wouldn’t buy one for myself. My smartphone’s sole purpose is to keep in touch with people, mostly via text and Facebook and sometimes email, for both professional and personal reasons.

How do I identify those tasks? I keep track of use frequency, usually in the background. For my desktop and laptop, I use RescueTime. It shows me what applications I actually use. For my other devices, I look at how much data the applications have sent and received. The list of applications used shows me what I actually do with the device.

For other devices, the easiest way is to keep a diary. If you’re on the fence about an upgrade or a contract renewal, this is a great way to help you make up your mind. Keep track of how often you use the devices and services you have available to you. Did you watch Netflix for an hour? Note it. Did you watch cable for an hour? Note it.

If you keep track of those things on a regular basis – you don’t have to always do it, but doing it occasionally is very useful – you’ll get a clear picture of the things you do to fill your time.

Now, here’s the key part. If a cool service is available to you right now and you’re not using it, you shouldn’t ever pay because you might use it in the future. If you have a Netflix subscription, for example, and you watch Netflix one or two hours a month, the subscription isn’t worth it and it’s not worth paying extra to have a device with a Netflix app when you upgrade.

The Electronics Lifecycle

What I’ve found is that when I scale back and look at my actual usage, it turns out that I rarely need to upgrade my electronics. Instead, I usually wait until they stop working for some reason before I upgrade.

When I do upgrade – and, honestly, it’s usually a replacement for a dead device – I look for a device that can simply do the things I know I’m already doing and do it well.

For example, when I replace my desktop computer, all I need is a low-powered device without a monitor. I already have a monitor. Nothing I do requires heavy computer power. Thus, I’m going to go pretty low-end. I’ll either build it myself or look at computer guides for a solid low-end choice and I’ll save money.

When I replace my smartphone, my only questions are whether it can send and receive calls and texts and whether I can use Evernote (for all of my notes) and Facebook (for getting in touch with people) on it. Everything else doesn’t matter.

If I replace my television, all I need is something that can show me an HDMI signal with a reasonable size. I already have stuff that can show me Netflix on the television, so I don’t need a TV with apps. I don’t need a giant screen – at least not any bigger than what we own. I’ll just look for a smaller, well-built television with minimal features beyond high definition. It will do everything I need for it to do and I’ll save a bundle compared to Frank’s 2000″ TV.

I do not care about what a device might do in the future or that it offers a feature I already have and don’t use. If I don’t use something, it doesn’t matter to me and I’m not going to pay for it. If it’s a hypothetical future service, I’ll wait for that hypothetical future to arrive before I worry about it.

What Electronics I Currently Use

Right now, I have a desktop computer that’s about two years old. The previous desktop computer I used became our family computer when our old family computer bit the dust. Both computers do everything we need, so we won’t be replacing one until one of these fails. As I mentioned above, I use it for pretty basic tasks and only have need for free apps.

I have a laptop computer that’s somewhere between six and seven years old. I will not replace it until it dies. I use it solely for writing in travel situations. When I do replace it, I’ll simply buy a low-end laptop with a decently sized keyboard (I have big hands).

I have an iPad Mini that I received as a gift. I mostly use it for reading and occasional web browsing. I will likely use it until the thing doesn’t boot any more and then I’ll probably not replace it, though I’ll probably receive one as a gift at that point. It doesn’t serve a truly vital function for me.

I have a smartphone that I’ll continue to use until it croaks. I’m happy with my cellular provider, so I’ll just go in there and get a new phone when the time comes. I’ll choose the cheapest phone they have that does what I need – texting, calls, Facebook, and Evernote – and it’ll probably be a freebie.

We have a television that we purchased in 2010 to replace our old CRT television. We’ll use it until it fails, then we’ll replace it with, if anything, a lower-end one. All we need it for is a reasonably large HD screen, as we have an old Playstation 3 (bought before our financial meltdown) that provides Netflix for us.

All of our electronics are on a “use it until it dies, then buy a minimal replacement” cycle. It saves us money and lets us do everything we need to do.

The Number One Biggest Take-Home Lesson

People rarely use 90% of the “gee whiz” features on the devices they buy. Marketers gush over all of these features and apps and other attributes, but in truth, I don’t use the vast majority of them, nor does anyone I know.

Everyone just uses a handful of things on their devices. They might use other features once in a great while, but the vast majority of usage boils down to just a handful of things.

It’s not worth spending money on those unused features or those rare exceptions. Ignore them. They don’t matter. They’re just marketing.

Instead, know what you actually need to do with the device. Compare all of the devices that allow you to do those things you need to do and choose the one with the best reliability reputation and warranty out of that group. Use Consumer Reports if you’re not sure.

If you find yourself desiring a new feature, see if you already have something that can do it. When we wanted Netflix on our television, we found that we could get it through our video game consoles that we already owned, for example. When new apps come out, they almost always run on what we already have. You’ll probably find that you use it for a while, then discover you didn’t really need it that much anyway.

If you stick with that policy, you’ll have devices that do the things you actually need them to do but you won’t find yourself wasting money on things you don’t need.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/my-timeless-strategy-for-buying-electronics/feed/1Using an Inexpensive Streaming Video Box to Replace Cable Televisionhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/using-an-inexpensive-streaming-video-box-to-replace-cable-television/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/using-an-inexpensive-streaming-video-box-to-replace-cable-television/#commentsMon, 02 Jun 2014 20:00:31 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=23928There is an astounding amount of quality movies and television series available on Netflix. There’s a shocking number of great channels available on Youtube. Add on top of that the many, many other streaming services out there, both free and paid, and you begin to realize that there is far more than enough television content ...

]]>There is an astounding amount of quality movies and television series available on Netflix. There’s a shocking number of great channels available on Youtube. Add on top of that the many, many other streaming services out there, both free and paid, and you begin to realize that there is far more than enough television content floating around out there on the internet to permanently replace your cable television.

It’s cheaper, too. Netflix is $9 a month for streaming. Youtube is free. Those two services alone provide more things I want to watch than I possibly have time to watch. That’s a lot cheaper than a cable bill – assuming, of course, that you already have home internet access which, if you’re reading this, is a reasonably safe assumption.

So why not just cut out the cable?

One of the big obstacles standing in people’s way is the convenience of just flipping on the television and watching something. Although there are some televisions out there that have Netflix and Youtube and other services built right in, many people don’t have such an option. The perception for many people is that you have to be sitting in front of a computer to enjoy Netflix or Youtube.

Fortunately, that’s quickly becoming a thing of the past. There are several companies out there producing simple boxes that you can hook up to (almost) any television that can make services like Netflix or Youtube appear on your screen just like ordinary television channels from your cable box.

If you have reasonably fast internet access at home, the convenience of a streaming video box hooked up to your television and the huge amount of live video available makes this an extremely compelling alternative to regular television. In fact, if I were personally in charge of the decision, this is what we would use for all television in our home and, in the near future, the options are going to be strong enough that we will make this switch permanently.

For most users, I’d recommend the Roku 3 or the Amazon Fire, as they’re the most well-rounded; Roku has more “channels” available at the moment, but Amazon will catch up like gangbusters and they have a pretty good customer support history.

The Apple TV works best if you have a ton of movies and TV shows you’ve already purchased from the Apple Store. The Chromecast works best if you’re going to be moving from television to television a great deal, but I think it’s the weakest package in terms of just sitting down and using it.

What about news? Both Roku and Amazon Fire have streaming news. It’s a little bit different than watching CNN or Fox News or MSNBC in that it mostly just shows you a sequence of segments from their various shows, sometimes with one commercial between them. If a major event happens, they’ll switch to live coverage. These are all free.

There isn’t good local news coverage on these boxes; however, if you want local news, it’s pretty easy to supplement this with over-the-air broadcast channels for free.

What about sports? All of the major sports leagues (except for the NFL) offer subscription services that let you watch all of their games live. The subscription fees vary; usually, they charge you for a full season at once. If you’re an addict of a particular sport, this is amazing.

If you’re an NFL addict, this is probably the biggest drawback of switching away from cable. You can watch many games over the air via the traditional broadcast channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) for free.

What about my favorite show? It depends on what your favorite show is. Many shows have their current episodes available on Hulu, so you’ll want to poke around there.

I’m much more of a “binge” watcher, in that I’d rather just watch a whole bunch of episodes of a show all at once. Netflix is far better at this than cable or network television as it’s set up for exactly that. I watched two full seasons of House of Cards in four days a while back, for example.

Basically, it’s television that works a little different than before and has a somewhat different selection of programming. You have much more control over what you want to watch, though you might not have everything you want, and there’s an almost infinite variety of stuff out there to discover.

Plus, there’s no contract, Netflix is just $9 a month, and you’re investing less than $100 in the box with no more bills ever.

If you’re more of a casual television viewer, which is what I would call myself, this is a great way to still have a lot of options on the television for a dirt cheap price.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/using-an-inexpensive-streaming-video-box-to-replace-cable-television/feed/1The Future of Cheap Televisionhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-future-of-cheap-television/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-future-of-cheap-television/#commentsSun, 12 Jan 2014 14:00:15 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=20481A few days ago, at the Consumer Electronics Show, an announcement was made that I think points toward a future, a few years down the road, of very inexpensive television service for anyone, regardless of their interests. World Wrestling Entertainment – yes, the professional wrestling company – announced an online streaming service a la Netflix ...

]]>A few days ago, at the Consumer Electronics Show, an announcement was made that I think points toward a future, a few years down the road, of very inexpensive television service for anyone, regardless of their interests.

World Wrestling Entertainment – yes, the professional wrestling company – announced an online streaming service a la Netflix for $9.99 a month. The service includes a 24/7 schedule of programming, plus an on-demand library of their 100,000+ hours of archived wrestling shows. This is essentially Netflix for professional wrestling fans.

So, why does this matter?

First of all, this exact model makes a ton of sense for any media company out there with a lot of archived programming. Some media companies are already doing it – for example, HBO GO exists already for people who want to watch full archives of the various HBO original television series. Netflix essentially provides this for a bunch of different television and film companies, streaming their archives on-demand.

However, what this really points to – in my eyes – is sports programming.

I can’t tell you the number of people who have written to me saying that they would gladly get rid of their cable service if it wasn’t for baseball or football or basketball or hockey season. They pay $60 a month (or more) to maintain a cable or satellite package so that they can continue to enjoy their favorite sport.

Now, imagine this. Imagine if the NFL comes out with a similar streaming package. They charge $14.95 per month (but you have to pay for a full year at a time) for it and it includes the 24/7 programming of the NFL Network plus streaming of all games for your four favorite teams (or maybe $19.95 a month for all teams). Plus, the package includes archives of all games from past seasons, plus the full NFL Films library on demand.

Let’s say you’re a big basketball fan, but you like to watch full runs of dramatic television shows and some comedies, too. You currently pay for broadband internet and an $80 a month cable package.

Now, let’s say the NBA copies this kind of streaming package described above, enabling you to watch games online for, say, $20 per month. At that point, you could just ditch your cable package, get the NBA package, add Netflix for another $9 a month, and get a digital converter box so you can watch over-the-air local channels for free. You would essentially retain everything you enjoy watching on television and save $50 per month.

Here’s my advice to you: if there’s just one or two things holding you back from dropping your cable bill, watch very carefully over the next year or two and see if they pop up as an online streaming service. If they do, you should strongly consider dropping your cable package and replacing it with a digital converter box and antenna (for free over-the-air local channels), the streaming service of whatever it is you enjoy, and perhaps also a general streaming service like Netflix.

The total cost of those things would be about $30 a month on top of the internet bill you already have and would allow you to completely drop your cable bill.

The future of pay-for-only-what-you-want television is getting closer. When it arrives, the options are going to be in place for people to save quite a bit of money by dropping the channels and programming they don’t care about and keeping only what they actually use and enjoy, which is one of the biggest principles of frugality.

]]>http://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-future-of-cheap-television/feed/0Are You In Need of a Media Diet?http://www.thesimpledollar.com/junk-food-for-the-mind/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/junk-food-for-the-mind/#commentsSun, 01 Dec 2013 14:00:17 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=19403“To see things in their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life.” – William Edward Hartpole Lecky Recently, I enjoyed a great article at The Happiness Project entitled “Avoid the Dangerous Allure of “Potato Chip” News.” The article compares most news reporting ...

]]>“To see things in their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life.” – William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Recently, I enjoyed a great article at The Happiness Project entitled “Avoid the Dangerous Allure of “Potato Chip” News.” The article compares most news reporting to “potato chips” – it’s meant to cause a very quick emotional response that goes away quickly and leaves you yearning for more, but doesn’t provide any real depth.

Quite a lot of modern life is like that. For example, if your Facebook page is anything like my own, it’s mostly filled with people posting very quick glimpses of the great things they’ve done that go by in a flash, or they post pictures that show an extremely simplified view of a political or social issue meant solely to evoke a quick response rather than a thoughtful one (yes, both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of it).

Marketing companies do this, too. They’ll do anything to get a product or a corporate logo in front of your eyes and ears along with an emotional response that will cause one thing to stick in your head – this product is good.

Grocery stores do it with the placement of product on the shelves. Text messages are “potato chips” as well. The list goes on and on.

The end result of all of this is that we jump to conclusions based on very little information. If someone or something pushes the right emotional button for us a few times, we’re likely to make up our minds about it in a strictly positive or negative fashion.

As a result, I have friends who are absolutely convinced that one particular motor company is strictly better than the rest, regardless of the type of automobile or the model or the model year. I have friends who absolutely believe that one political party is more correct than the other one on all issues (moral and otherwise). I have friends who will only shop at specific stores (regardless of price or customer service) and other friends who will basically buy any product that has their favorite sport logo on it (I’m referring to different friends with different logos on many different products).

Rather than letting facts be our guide, it’s incredibly easy to fall into a trap where bundles of quick emotional responses become our guide to our day to day choice in almost every avenue of life.

My solution is simple. I’ve been on an almost complete media diet for months.

I cannot remember the last time I watched the news on television. If I hear about a current event that actually might be relevant to me, I go to a facts-only source like Wikipedia, where current event articles are locked down and incredibly well-sourced. I’ve almost completely abandoned Facebook as well.

Instead, I’m trying to learn about things in depth. Rather than making up my mind quickly about politics and economics, I’m reading about how the Federal Reserve actually works from multiple books. Rather than paying attention to any ads or consumer “news,” I’m basically ignoring all information about consumer products unless I need something, at which point I specifically research the product.

What has been the result of this? Aside from a few items related directly to my hobbies, I cannot think of a single thing that I actually want to buy. I don’t feel compelled to buy anything at all beyond basic needs and I haven’t for the last few months – again, outside of a few hobby items.

Even more, I no longer feel like shouting from the rooftops when reading about views of any kind that I disagree with. Rather than getting upset because they don’t match my views, I find myself scratching my head and wanting to know more about why that person thinks that way. My “to-read” list of books is getting pretty long, I suppose, but that’s what the library system is for.

I have a really simple challenge for you. For the next few days, unless you have a specific program you’ve been planning to watch, turn off your television. Similarly, unless you have a specific task to fulfill, avoid the internet. (Well, except maybe The Simple Dollar.)

Just take a break from it. Use that time to do something else, like taking care of projects left undone in your life. If you find yourself bored (which you might), put on some music or go for a long walk or write a letter to someone or read a book or watch a documentary that covers an issue in depth or do some volunteer work or spend time with someone you care about.

If things work out anything like they have for me, you’ll find that a lot of powerful emotional triggers slide away from you. World news or political events won’t make you as angry or upset when you do hear about them. Even better, products won’t trigger responses for you, either.

You’ll start to lose the strong feelings you have one way or another about products and you’ll start relying more and more on hard information, like comparing nutrition facts and the price per unit or the actual data from a comparison article in Consumer Reports. Such choices will become easier, too, because you’ll find yourself with far less decision fatigue.

If you find it doesn’t help, there’s nothing stopping you from just picking back up where you left off. However, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear that you begin to simply respond differently to things in your life after a while on a media diet.